Reviews by Canalboy

Skullduggery is a pretty obscure piece of revenge horror written initially in C for the Apple II by the author then later revised and released in DOS; there are two versions out there, both from 1989. The one with the October date mark is the one to plump for.

It would make the top ten of several personal text adventure taxonomies: hardest games; most atmospheric offerings; best horror scenarios. It may have helped being English as the game is set in Southeast England in the eighteenth century days of smuggling.

You start off, like so many games, in a forest and the opening section is a race against time to find a light source before dark. This isn't the kind of game that gives you any purchase when moving in the dark. Even entering a dark room from a light one it's Goodnight Vienna.

As you explore the ghost-riddled mansion (there are many effective random messages pertaining to the undead) you can discover various writings which will hopefully point you in the direction of your quest. The gradual unfolding of the family history of the Leominsters and Bradys reminded me very much of the revision you undertake in Curses and The Mulldoon Legacy to discover the family skeletons, both literal and metaphorical.

David Jewett is a very effective writer and I found the backstory fascinating. It isn't often you get a happy melding of puzzlefest (assemble the ingredients for a potion) and narrative (strong familial plot line) but I think he pulls it off admirably here.

It is a large game containing more than 100 locations and many objects to manipulate but the size doesn't feel bloated just for the sake of gasconnade (I'm looking at you Epic Adventures). The parser accepts full sentences in some cases but there is no OOPS or UNDO. PUT X ON Y is not the same as PUT X IN Y and the difference is important in a couple of places. You can use TAKE ALL, DROP ALL and VERBOSE. There are no scoring or light or hunger/thirst daemons which can only be a good thing. EXAMINE is available.

I did sometimes struggle to carry out certain actions which were obvious prerequisites i.e. the parser doesn't understand FILL but you need to carry liquids in more than one container in the course of the game. PUT X in Y does the trick however. I also hit a disambiguation problem relating to the two notes in the game. My advice is don't read or take the butler's note until you have found the other one or you will not be able to read both. There are synonyms available for some objects.

The game's major selling point is an above average back story. The horror theme is cloyingly omnipresent here, whether in a dusty old attic or the middle of a forest clearing. Ghosts and the undead stalk indoors and outdoors here and close encounters are very often of the "bugger I've been beheaded" kind:
"A chill descends. Suddenly a shimmering white light in the shape of a man seems to step out from nowhere. As you watch, the shape glares back at you. The ghost's lips are moving and it seems to be forming words; but no sound emerges."

Other random deaths occur at the teeth of a pack of wolfdogs or a poltergeist who hurls items of mansion furniture at you. Keep on the move!
Some of the descriptions are rather long but never long-winded and careful attention should be paid to architectural features as they carry a clue to a recurring puzzle inside the mansion. The map layout is a credible one with no computer rooms plonked down next to a mangrove swamp for example. This helps to heighten the tension.

It must be said that this is a ball-breakingly difficult challenge. Some of the clues carried in the various bits of paper, parchments etc. are quite obtuse and it took me a long time to work out what to do with the bodies that can be moved around the map, although mercifully there aren't many opportunities to make the thing unwinnable without realising it. The transportation system was the single biggest impasse for me as the object(s) utilised for teleportation are not exactly obvious. You can also only pass once through the iron gate outside the mansion's grounds and working out how to get back subsequently requires very careful mapping of the environs; the solution is a very clever logistical puzzle. One novel and also welcome feature is an online map which occupies the left half of the screen.

The inventory limit is weight, not number based which adds to the feeling of authenticity and requires working out what to take on specific sorties and what to leave back at base. One annoyance is the random closing of doors when you enter rooms; there are many of them and constantly having to re-open them becomes tedious after a while.

There was apparently a hint system available from the author for $10 which provided you with a decoder to type for instance CLUE X to find out the use of a particular item or room. As this was first offered 36 years ago I somehow doubt it is still possible to get it.

I had a problem restoring saved positions via DOSBox-X until I upgraded the version to the latest and the problem went away. You can also save up to ten positions (0-9) with the SAVE command. There aren't an enormous number of puzzles given the size of the map but they are often rather clever and often rather obscure as previously intimated. Some of the potion ingredients that need to be garnered require very careful reading of items and room descriptions; small anatomical/architectural details are sometimes essential to progress and easy to miss. There are also several red herrings scattered throughout the game. Finding the links between the various diaries/parchments etc. found and physical objects is not always easy; experimentation is the name of the game. As mentioned the logistical puzzle around finding a way back to the mansion after visiting the forest is very clever and likewise the exportation of an object back from where you find it to the room where you need it is also well-developed.

Unfortunately this is one of those games where you can come to a sudden halt if stymied by certain puzzles. Don't be afraid to drink anything you can lay your hands on bu the way!

I really enjoyed Skullduggery although I can't in all honesty recommend it to adventuring neophytes; indeed many gnarled and cynical adventurers (like myself) will struggle in certain places too. It is a very polished and clever game but you won't be finishing it quickly.

A bit like the Cryptic Crossword Puzzle compilers who create the puzzles in the heavier journals here in the UK, I tend to have my favourite IF authors, the ones who are on my wavelength and the ones who seem to see the world from the same side of the looking glass as myself. Birds of a feather and all that. For instance, I have always found Andy Phillips's games easier than a lot of other people seem to, whereas Andrew Plotkin's masterpieces have always left me struggling for air and inspiration, my persecution complex making me feel like he was having yet another Roman Holiday at my expense whenever I tried another work from his oeuvre.

Having played (and in the second instance completed) two of Jim Aikin's earlier games, the sprawling and atmospheric old style puzzlefest Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina and the medium sized but more comical A Flustered Duck I approached Lydia's Heart with some idea of how his puzzles are created and solved (very intricate, get 'a' so that 'b' can unlock 'c' thus releasing 'd' who gives you 'e' by way of thanks and with which you can bribe 'f'.... but also with the realisation that his mind, like Plotkin's, is hard wired differently to mine.

It quickly became evident upon starting Lydia's Heart that here is Aikin the storyteller, making a marked sea change towards what is often considered better (i.e. more narrative driven) IF and no longer an ocean away from the direction that my mind tends to be sailing.

You could argue that there is a certain despairing similarity between the cold, bleak and sinister Shopping Mall in Ballerina and the cloyingly decayed rural hovel of Heart, but whereas the former is little more than a finite (albeit very large) games board upon which Aikin can plant his clever snares and traps, the latter appears (in the First and Third Acts at least) as a place in which a story can unfold and therefore seems bigger despite occupying far fewer locations; as if the young female protagonist would fall off the end of the world should she try to leave Eternal Springs, doomed like Eustacia Vye attempting to leave Egdon Heath in Thomas Hardy's The Return Of The Native.

The NPC's in this game (of which there are quite a few) are not as static as is often the case, and the more you communicate with them the more you become aware of something very sinister deep in the heart of old Dixie. Slowly Hardy or Tennessee Williams becomes Lovecraft. Of the characters, my favourite (and I suspect Aikins's too) is the talentless wannabee Nashville warbler Honey, who gets all the best lines: "Honestly, I think I’d forget my boobs if they weren’t a hundred percent real." “My career?” Honey arches her back so her breasts stick out. “I’ve just released my very first CD. Maybe I mentioned that." Morally ambiguous characters are also rarae aves in IF, so David is also an interesting addition. Torn between selling his soul to regain his health and his innate revulsion of what he must do to achieve it, he is uniquely vulnerable within the framework of the story.

Not everyone is againt you as you will slowly realise, and although the game is not studded with sudden death endings at this point you must still be careful what you are carrying when entering into colloquy with anyone, as one unconcealed item can be your downfall. Fortunately you will certainly stumble across the almost ubiquitous, bottomless carrying device early on which for some reason no-one ever questions you about. On the whole the inventory system works quite well with only occasional annoyances.

There are still a number of difficult but fair puzzles to solve in this part of the game, but they fit in so well with the narrative that they don't feel like a contrived caravanserai of brain teasers in a puzzle book as in some of Aikin's previously cited work. They are there to lubricate the plot, not as stand alone set pieces of logic.

Then suddenly, should you progress far enough through the narrative you are plunged into the Second Act if you will, a world of mazes, statues, scorpions and locked cabinets that feels much more like old style Aikin again. This section contains a few stern posers, and one particular leap of intuition which I wouldn't think many people would make (Spoiler - click to show)One of the red jewels on the pedestals is actually Lydia's heart and you need to have the locket open, worn and point at it with the monkey beside you to get it and I was reduced on a couple of occasions to checking out the extremely well constructed Hints section. You can only reveal answers to problems in parts of the game you have encountered, much more satisfying than a mere walkthrough.

The denouement of the game seems to me to have been a bit more hastily written. For the first time a few minor bugs appear(Spoiler - click to show)you find the pouch of leaves in the hole every time you search it as if it were the first time, and when you are in the power boat or the rowboat it tells you that they are too far away to be searched.

The limits of credibility are occasionally stretched to snapping point as well during the end game; those chasing you at one point would have to be thicker than several hundred short planks not to follow your trail successfully(Spoiler - click to show)through the trapdoor in Cabin four to the cellar.There is also an object you will need right at the very end of the game which, if you manage to find it or even realise that you needed it, must make you more of a deity capable of Dei Ex Machina gestures than the one contained in the game.

The ending came as a bit of a disappointment as it would have been nice to see the bad guys get their come uppance, but I left the game feeling much more like I'd interacted with something linear than completed another of those "Crossword Puzzles" and that can only be a more rewarding thing.

The parser and the writing are as accomplished as we have come to expect from Mr. Aikin.

In summary, and despite the few caveats mentioned, a splendid addition to the IF canon and one guaranteed to keep you you engrossed for hours. Four stars.