Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

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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.

Feeling angry, hurt, betrayed, le Docteur must leave for the countryside, banished from the educated and cultured social circles of the city. Fortunately, a sophisticated high-class Lady comes to live in the village shortly after, providing at least some measure of worldly and literary conversation.

Through a series of letters to the lover left in the city, we learn about the goings-on in the peasant town, the background of this high-class Lady, and the events leading to le Docteur's banishment.

The story plays in the past, perhaps 3 centuries ago. It’s an impressive tour de force on the part of the author to write the letters so consistently in the voice and style of a cultured person from that age, distinguished yet emotional, full of purplish expressions without dropping out of character.

The epistolary form the author has chosen lends itself perfectly to a gradual build-up of the mystery at the heart of the story. The letters are one-sided, we only ever see the perspective of le Docteur. They start off as an account of a lover’s yearning, a lament over the circumstances of their parting. Slowly, the focus shifts to the letter-writer’s new living circumstances: the village of Meaux with its peasants and farmers, its livestock and farmlands. Throughout the most part of the narrative, le Docteur is preoccupied with securing the attention of the lover left behind, recounting amusing or strange events in the village and avowing undying love and desire.

Underneath this light and gossipy tone, the reader gleans more and more threatening fragments of an unfolding mystery, while the protagonist remains oblivious of the possibility of this looming danger. The distance of the reader to the events described in the letters leaves room to see correlations that remain invisible for the letter-writer, who is too close to see the bigger picture. Of course, from an out-of-game perspective, it’s also the case that the reader is capable of expecting a turn of circumstances that is impossible to prepare for from within the story-viewpoint.

Le Docteur's letters speak of intense emotions of love and longing towards the left-behind lover, and the reader is an engaged, empathetic witness, often even flinching at jealous words of accusation or egocentric and manipulatively twisting arguments. Until the very end, the love story remains the main focus, the mystery serving to heighten the tension without ever taking control of the narrative.

Very tense and touching. Among the best I’ve read.

The product of the Prince-factory, your education is almost complete. In these final hours before being sent off to the Kingdom that awaits you, you must prepare yourself for a Joust of Rhetoric against one of your fellow/adversary Princes.

To this end, you must explore the Factory, proving your knowledge of the Book of Princes to gain coins of merit. These can be exchanged for coins of gold to buy equipment.
On the surface, this seems like basic RPG-gameplay. Level up you armour and weaponry, or rather, in the context of this setting, your luxury attire and your rhetorical techniques, until you feel strong enough to face your opponent and hopefully prevail and attain your Kingdom.

However…

The setting of La Fabrique des Princes, this vast complex of corridors and halls, where the walls have faces and voices speak enigmatic words, is too intruiging to just traverse in a simple goal-oriented fashion. A menacing feeling of deception soon grabs the player’s attention, inviting to search deeper…

Although the map is small, a mere 15 rooms, it gives the impression of a much larger edifice, isolated from normal time and space. I would have loved to search this place in parser-style, but I must admit that being denied the option of closely examining the many puzzling features of the rooms and hallways adds to the feeling of uncertainty and puzzlement.
There is a region of the map which is normally off-limits to the Princes, but is opened up for you on this special occasion. It would have added to the atmosphere of secrecy and hidden meanings if it were indeed off-limits, and some kind of subterfuge was necessary to access it, instead of just being given a key.

The use of timed text put me off a bit. I didn’t feel it added anything of worth to the piece. Fortunately the timed passages are short, so annoyance is kept to a minimum.

Discovering more of the Factory’s history and purpose, and meeting the “marginal” characters at the edge of the map was well worth the time spent pursuing “side”-quests. A story about how stopping and thinking is more valuable than blindly chasing a predetermined and ill-understood objective.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.

Picture this:
You and your friends are taking a stroll through the woods when you suddenly come upon a dilapidated house with a big warning sign on it. What do you do?
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\>N
Front of House
The dilapidated building turns out to be a neglected old house. Surely
nobody lives here? To the north is a large door with a sign on it. To the
west a small path leads around the side of the house. The main path is to the
south.

\>READ SIGN
The sign says:

MAD SCIENTIST
NO TRESPASSING
GO AWAY
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Exactly! You go around to the side of the house and break into the basement. After such a monumental display of <strike>stupidity</strike>Adventure Spirit tm, everything that happens now is completely deserved.

What happens is that you are appointed guinea-pig "volunteers" for the Mad Scientist's forays into time-traveling. Travel to five places and times in history and bring back five symbolic items.

Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time? has a bit of a moodswing issue. It has difficulty deciding whether to emphasise the gameplay or the immersive experience of the surroundings, and decides to do both. The varying depth of descriptions and the care with which they were crafted are good examples of this.
-Many times an EXAMINE-command is met with a dry default "You can't see that,"-response. At least as often the game says "The pink handkerchief is not important."
-Something similar holds for directional commands. The normal default "You can't go that way,"-response is present for obviously closed directions (a room with only one doorway), but in some locations the author breaks the fourth wall and explains to the player directly why a certain direction is closed off (instead of blocking the way with an appropriate in-game command).

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>Cross-roads
You are at a road junction. Roads lead north, south, east and west. The
road to the west leads away from the village. This would have been indicated
on a signpost but all signposts have been removed for the duration of the war
as a security measure.

\>W
It's obvious that there must be a road leading out of the village but, as I
didn't want to have to include the entire north of England in this game, you
can't go that way.

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The sparse default responses and the jokingly breaking of the fourth wall create an atmosphere of puzzle-priority. You have a setting and a flimsy frame-story, now get on with the obstacles the author has put in your path.
However, this stands in strong contrast to the care that went into the historical details of the setting. Examining a rock might tell you that it's not important, or even that it's not even there, but examining a frescoe will give you a detailed description of the depiction, along with the mythological context. All while the frescoe is no more important than the rock.
While I appreciated this amount of attention to detail a lot, the contrast between the sparsely described "normal" game world and the enthusiasm in the description of these choice objects gave me the feeling I was being taken on a guided tour, where the tour-guide decides for you where to look.

The unevenness of the depth of description and implementation, apart from causing an imbalance in the feel of the world, also has a very strong impact on the perception of puzzles and potential solutions.
The heavy descriptive emphasis on certain details focuses the player's attention on them. To remain with the frescoe-example, I tried finding deeper symbolic/metaphoric meaning in the picture, I counted recurring elements in search of a hidden code, I tried to push eyes and stars to see if there was some secret machinery hidden underneath... I must say I found it a bit disappointing when I realised that the lovingly described artwork was an elaborate bit of worldbuilding, and that a simple down-to-earth LOOK BEHIND ELEPHANT would produce more tangible results.
I wouldn't really call the decorative descriptions "red herrings", I got used to them as historical information rather than puzzle-related clues quickly. They might throw off the player's focus the first few times, but the game is consistent in its style of puzzles, it won't suddenly change tack and expect you to deduce an obscure code from a background painting.

The collection of puzzles on offer in Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time is challenging but solvable, if you meticulously search every time-zone. Objects found in one time-zone may be needed to solve a puzzle in another, so there will be some going back-and-forth between areas. Using the items in the corrects way sometimes requires clever leap of imagination, an understanding of the culture of the specific time-zone you're in.
Besides the puzzles themselves, there are stumbling blocks in the way that are more a consequence of the game structure and some design decisions.
--The distance between a puzzle and the objects needed to solve it and/or the clues needed to understand it is sometimes very large. This makes it difficult in some cases to see the connection which would be obvious if clue, item, and puzzle were in the same few locations.
For each area, a clue in form of a cryptic poem is hidden somewhere in the game. I found some of these to be helpful in understanding the bigger objective of each zone, others not so much. I think it really comes down to how your brain works if you understand which information to derive from these poems.
--There are one-way dead-ends in some of the time-zones, meaning that if you didn't find all the important objects on your exploration, you can't go back to have another look. It's a good idea to put a checkpoint-save at the start of every area (while you're still in the time-machine!)
--There's a limit on how many things you can carry with you, even with the added space in a handy rucksack, and there's no way of knowing which objects will be needed when first entering a new time-zone. Also, there are a lot of red-herring items, objects you pick up or are given in the course of the game which may give a nice impression of the time and place you're in, but which serve no practical use.
As a result, you'll be doing a fair amount of selecting items you might need from your collection, and even then you'll be doing some high-level inventory juggling.

Fortunately, you're not alone.

Aside from acting as an extension of your inventory capacity, your three loyal companions (Tom, Dick, and Harry. Really.) have other uses as well. Their remarks on your performance and banter among themselves serves as a bit of comic relief. Sadly, their pool of utterances from which the game randomly picks each turn is rather shallow. I quickly zoned out and ignored them. Your friends' help is needed to solve some of the puzzles, in situations where you yourself are found lacking. Lastly, they form a three-level hint system. I used this a lot, especially Tom's vague nudges, but they're of no great help when you're well and truly stuck. Their hints will edify you on how to tackle a problem, but they will not enlighten you on the sometimes harder task of finding the right object. You're still left to search the entire map on your own if you haven't found the item the first time through. This leaves you vulnerable to Zombification.

A lot of other NPCs inhabit the areas you visit. The majority of them don't understand a word you say. Being from a different country in the distant past will have that effect. The few that are open to some form of limited communication are there for puzzle-progress only.

Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time?'s structure of interdependent time-zones opens up many opportunities for interesting associative breakthroughs in solving its puzzles, but it's also very cruel. The anxiety of having missed something stopped me from fully enjoying the setting.

Good puzzler.

If you play this game without slavishly following the walkthrough to the smallest detail, you will ragequit when the endgame throws you out right before the final 6 or 7 moves.

I did.

Many puzzles in Jinxter have a straightforward adventure-game solution. This solution has potentially life-threatening side-effects. You don't actually die though, but it takes a little bit off your luck-stat. Which you need. Which I didn't know. Which I only found out when I was thrown out of the endgame because I was low on Luck.

Restoring won't help this late in the game, the only way to experience the endgame and the good conclusion of the story is restarting and finding out the intermediate steps of caution in every solution.

>"Somehow, you don't feel quite as lucky as you did."

If you read the above line, it's time to restore and tackle that last puzzle again. Carefully...

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Now, do play Jinxter! It's fun!

No, really, it is.

For ages, Aquitania has been under the protection of an enchanted bracelet which grants above-average luck to its inhabitants. Recently, the power of the bracelet has diminished by the theft of several of its dangly charms. An opportunity for the Head Green Witch Jannedor to enlarge her influence on the land of Aquitania.
Your quest is clear. You must find the missing charms, restore the bracelet's enchantment, confront Jannedor!

Wait... Who is this "You"?
It appears that our savior of the land is actually a random hapless passer-by, designated by Fate (and a rather befuddled Guardian) to take on this land-savioring task.
Perhaps Magnetic Scrolls earlier works provide a clue to who You is...
-There's no mention of gills and fins, so it's not the dimension-portal jumping goldfish-detective from Fish.
-No exceptional catburglary skills, probably not the thief from Guild of Thieves either.
Nope. Seems like You is just an ordinary adventure person without any distinguishing traits.

The world that unfolds for You to explore is large and varied. It all starts out in the mundane comfy familiarity of You's own home, and it goes progressively more into fairy-talish territory with each new area.
(Ahem... When I said mundane, I should point out that's a rather relative term. The street in right out the front door is a literal Neverending Lane, and your furniture becomes, well, animated from time to time, presumably caused by the uncontrolled leakage of Luck.)
When I glance at my pen-and-paper map, the general shape is a narrow connecting line with bulges that represent multi-location puzzle areas. Four large areas are connected by some sort of vehicle ride (with attached puzzle). Apart from the connection between areas 1 and 2, these are one-way only. I love vehicular travel in adventures. It draws open the map and gives an impression of real long travel, as opposed to traversing unrealistically long distances on foot.
At least one sneakily hidden passage requires some weakly clued detection work, but the area it leads to is more than worth it.

Jaunty and exuberant writing pulls You into the cheerful atmosphere of the game-world; vibrant location descriptions are supported by beautiful pictures that are helpful in constructing a clear mental image of You's surroundings.

>Spring

>This cool spring, surrounded on all sides but the west by steep banks, bubbles up from underground. It looks entirely artless and natural, belying the fact that Xam's crazed gardener constructed it by means of an intricate system of dams and hydraulics, initially flooding half the neighbourhood and leading to a series of acrimonious lawsuits lasting several years.

At other times, it's more restrained, slipping in a drily humorous response to an EXAMINE-command.

>The telephone is a telephone, just like a red one, except it is green.

Speaking of the EXAMINE-command... There is none. Everything is done with LOOK (fortunately its abbreviation L is accepted). It took some conscious effort to redirect my fingers' deeply engrained automation from X [object] to L [object], but the adjustment wasn't too big.
On the whole, the parser is perfectly adequate. It recognises complex commands (DROP ALL EXCEPT) and multiple-action commands (SMELL DEAD FLY THEN LICK IT). It is however somewhat too fine-grained, making the PC feel like a toddler who has to be pointed to all the discrete components of a seemingly simple action. Until you get used to holding the PC's hand, this leads to a lot of "With what?" and "To whom" responses where a modern parser would deduce these things without problem.
---->Short aside as to why I'm mentioning this: Jinxter was published in 1987, when these finer points of parsing were not by any means to be taken for granted (still aren't, actually, when you look beyond the strongest of modern parsers). Boasting about parser-strength was a real promotional tool, and players then would not have found these "shortcomings" to be disruptive.

To be sure, I never encountered an instance where parser inadequacy hindered the solving of a puzzle. The puzzles were more than enough of a challenge all by themselves.
The first area is gentle enough, the puzzles are easily recognisable and the limited amount of items in You's inventory makes it rather straightforward to come up with the correct solution. (Look out for that additional Luck-complication though!)
The later areas, however, are much harder, especially the midgame. A bunch of interdependent locations necessitate running from one part of the area to the other to find the right item to use on a distant puzzle, there's an unknown order to the obstacles that needs to be figured out in order to make real progress, and the puzzles are just harder.
Add to this a further complication: the "carry-all" You picked up early in the game turns out not to be a carry-all at all. It's handy to keep all You's stuff together, but each item still fills up your inventory, whether it's inside the container or not. The inventory-limit is generous, but in a game like this it's hard to predict if you're going to need those nailclippers a second time or not. It never certain when it's safe to discard an object, so You ends up carrying every carryable article around. This becomes a problem when one of the one-way passages prohibits the transporting of the carry-much and forces You to choose which items to bring.
The majority of puzzles are clever and fun to hypothesise about. Some are very elegant and surprising, with a solution so simple that it's not obvious at all. Others are obscure, underclued to the point of unfairness, requiring many attempts and possibly a few RESTOREs.
---->Be sure to put a checkpoint-save at the beginning of each new area. Allthough it's impossible to die in Jinxter, it's exceedingly easy to wind up Zombified. I also encountered a bug that would have made the game unwinnable had I not been able to restore to my checkpoint. ((Spoiler - click to show)The Bartender gets fussy when you give him the wrong coin. He gives you a glass of beer that you cannot interact with.)

There are many NPCs to interact with. They're of the thick cardboard type, but the cardboard is painted in bright colours and cartoonish features. They're fun to mess with a bit, amusing caricatures, but don't expect any depth of conversation. Their main purpose is to serve as obstacles, to be fooled, distracted, mislead in the search for the missing charms.
There's also a weird Guardian (the one who appointed You as the right person to undertake this quest in the first place) soaring around who will regularly appear out of nowhere. It's worth asking him about the problem at hand, but don't count on a helpful answer. He might point You in the right direction, but it's just as possible he'll be too confused to help in any way, or too busy with finding the nearest whatever-it-is that he's after this time. In short, you shouldn't rely on the Guardian as an in-game hint system to help you find the charms.

Collecting the charms grants access to the magic powers they possess. Each charm encapsulates a single spell. These work as simple and straightforward manipulations of the surroundings, nothing too complicated, but a nice extra toolbox to consider when pondering a puzzle. And of course they're a lot of fun when thrown around randomly at innocent, unsuspecting things or people in your immediate vicinity...

I started this review with a warning about the unfairness of the endgame, or, more precisely, about the necessity to do everything just right during the entire game to even be admitted to the endgame. And I did not restart and replay to enter the final few commands that separated me from the conclusion of the story. Nevertheless, I found Jinxter to be an engaging and entertaining exerience. Just watch your step and leave your temper at the entrance.

How Unseemly!
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The King is dead! All hail the Ki... well, seeing that Prince Charles is a five-year-old nasty specimen of royalty who has barely outgrown his toddler nappies, that should be "All hail Primo Varicella, Regent of Piedmont!"
Once you've managed to outmaneuver your rivals to the Regency in the maze of backstabbery and treasonous wit that lies before you at this time, that is...

Several times during my earliest forays into Interactive Fiction, 20-odd years ago, I started playing Adam Cadre's Varicella and quickly bounced off it. My expectations then were firmly geared towards long linear quest-adventures, and this game's time-limit and simultaneous sub-puzzles stumped me. I never got much further than trying to kick one of the guards in the nads when he wouldn't stand aside. (A swift death was my reward.)
In the past years, I have played and enjoyed a bunch of optimisation games, and delving into the historic vaults of IF had exposed me to many Cruel games with numerous try-die-repeat puzzles. With the added wisdom and experience so accumulated, I felt ready to once again tackle this highly acclaimed Classic of the Renaissance with an openness of mind and the patience to appreciate it on its own terms.

>"Photopia has made more of a mark, I suppose, but Photopia is a short story; Varicella is a world. There are so many things to see and do…"
--Adam Cadre on Varicella--

A very true assessment. What the author doesn't mention is that no single playthrough will ever contain even half the content this game has to offer. Merely to gather the absolute minimum of information necessary to solve the game requires multiple focused playthroughs. Finding out about the other conversation topics, item descriptions, hidden nooks kept me happily engaged for a good while after I had solved the central puzzle.

Varicella is amazing.


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----Rise Of Primo Varicella; A Truthful Account Of Our Behind-the-Scenes Assistance To One Palace Minister In His Ruthless Ascent to Power----
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--> I. In which We Acquaint Ourselves With The Pallazo del Piemonte:

As a first move, we slide our pocket pocket watch into our breastpocket, we won't be needing it anytime soon. Let death come as it wills. (In other words, do not pay notice to the advancing clock in the status bar.) In these first few visits to the Palace, our primary focus shall be on the basics of this imaginary world: the Map! Exits and entrances, locked doors and other puzzles, the locations of items to pick up and NPCs to chat up.
The Palace on each level is built according to an almost completely symmetrical floor plan. This arrangement will be most convenient later on, when time is of the essence. For now, we might as well draw our map and note and label the offices of our rivals for future reference.
Pairing the practical to the pleasant, our tour allows us to take in the halls, rooms, and corridors of the Palace, all described from Primo's point of view.

>\>LOOK

Your Quarters

You may have been relegated to the top of this tower, but that hasn't impeded you from imbuing your quarters with an excellence that not even a team of interior decorators flown in from Kyoto could achieve. Only someone with your finely-honed sensibilities could have taken this amount of space and kept it from seeming appallingly cramped. Though the panoramic windows to the north and west do their part in opening up the room, you still have to give most of the credit to yourself.

His attention to the smallest details of ornamentation reveals an inordinate fondness for luxury and style, this seeming to be his greatest priority in life, apart from his unquenchable thirst for power.

--> II. In Which The Gap Between Primo Varicella's Knowledge And Our Own Is Bridged, And Our Shared Understanding Is Broadened:

Having lived here for years, Primo has been involved in the palatial scheming and plotting for a long time before we made our entrance. It's essential for the player's understanding of what's going on to absorb all the information at hand to catch up with him.
Both the explicit asides in and the implicit hints at palatial power-dynamics between the lines of the room descriptions have already given us a view of the treacherous web of ambitons we'll need to navigate. A good way to get more insight is Primo's own record of his rivals and potential allies. (He has a nifty gizmo...)

This leads us straight to the next step: seeking out the other palace residents. Each and every one of them has their own flavour of wretchedness. Be it raw lust for power coupled with the guileful cunning needed to reach and hold a position in the Palace, the powerless misery of being a mere plaything in the machinations of the Court, or the distanced watchfulness of one awaiting the developments before choosing sides, all the players on this stage are deeply disturbing.
For at least one of them, the ordeals that life amidst these scheming villains have pushed her firmly beyond the reach of reason:

>\>ASK CHARLOTTE ABOUT ME
"i see a little varicella of a man," Princess Charlotte replies. "scaramouche! scaramouche! will you do the grim fandango? i think you will!"


Primo, with all his cynical scheming, is not by far the worst of the lot.

Gaining access to the personal quarters of the other palace inhabitants confronts us with the first few obstacles. Easy and straightforward as they may be, they provide the necessary first steps toward the cogs and wheels we'll need to set in motion. Careful navigation of the conversations and attentive investigation of their rooms will reveal secrets and weaknesses to be exploited later on. The items available in the private rooms point us toward potential ways to eliminate our rivals.

--> III. In Which Fragments of the Scheme are Discovered and Executed:

The accessible rooms and halls of the Palazzo di Piemonte fully investigated, the other denizens interrogated in as far as they would let us, important-seeming items in our inventory, the mind reeling with possible scenarios... It's time to finally act upon the hunches and what-ifs that were triggered by our exploration.

Each of Primo's rivals has their own puzzle-chain, their own sequence of steps toward their elimination. Because life in the Palace moves along at its own pace, and our adversaries are busily deploying their own sets of perfidious tactics, many of our actions are time-dependent.
A number of obstacles require intimate knowledge about the other residents gained in previous conversations to goad them in our desired direction. Other hurdles are of a more physical or technical nature, where we manipulate nature instead of people.
The main objective here is to find the way to take out each of Primo's rivals separately, without worrying yet about the others during one particular tour.

--> IV. In Which I Piece together Primo's Plan:

Alas! I failed at this final task. I had figured out the movements and weaknesses of Primo's rivals, and for each of them I found a way to exploit this knowledge against them. The distinct sequences for eliminating each of the other power-hungry wolves were clear to me, without even once peeking behind the curtains.

++++
Speaking of peeking behind curtains, we're treated to a nice reference to the Bard if we do precisely that:

>LOOK BEHIND TAPESTRY
The tapestry is flush against the wall, with nothing behind it but cool marble. You were expecting Polonius?
---Adam Cadre, Varicella---
--------------------------------------------------/
QUEEN
"What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!"
POLONIUS (behind the arras)
"What ho! Help!"
HAMLET
"How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead."
----He kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier
through the arras.----
---William Shakespeare, Hamlet---
--------------------------------------------------/
++++

Despite repeated attempts, I never succeeded at ordering the moves in these discrete seqences into an effective interlocking whole. After getting rid of the majority of opponents, there always remained at least one foe that I had not dealt with soon enough.
It's not enough to execute the separate sub-schemes one after the other, no matter in which order. Primo needs to think many moves ahead and slide the distinct plans together to have a chance of defeating the large-scale puzzle. Acquiring items and solving preparatory puzzles for a later adversary must be taken care of while still dealing with the present opponent, so that the whole of the masterplan is as time-efficient as possible.
When I felt utterly defeated and finally looked at a step-by-step walkthrough, the ultimate all-encompassing sequence of moves presented itself as a magnificent complex web, dealing with every circumstance and threat in an interwoven simultaneous master scheme.

Following the walkthrough and seeing events unroll showed me a vision of an inescapable, interlocking, overarching solution which has an almost mathematical beauty.

--> V. In Which Primo Varicella Prevails:

At the end of this horrible tale, Primo stand atop a heap of corpses, rewarded with the Regence of Piedmont. With the child Prince Charles under his protection and authority, his dream of power is fulfilled.

>"Yet it cannot be called talent to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends,
to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; such methods may
gain empire, but not glory. Still, if the courage of Primo Varicella in
entering into and extricating himself from dangers be considered,
together with his greatness of mind in enduring and overcoming
hardships, it cannot be seen why he should be esteemed less than the
most notable captain.
--Nicoló Macchiavelli, Il Principe; Chapter VIII: Of Those Who By Their Crimes Come To Be Princes.-- ("Agathocles" changed to "Primo Varicella)

The short epilogue concludes the story of Regent Primo Varicella in a fitting manner. It left me staring unseeing into the distance, pondering the fate of my luxury-loving, power-lusting companion whom I, contrary to my wishes, had grown somewhat fond of.


Varicella is among the very best IF has to offer. Magnificent.