Reviews by Canalboy

I have always had a soft spot for the "explore a large mansion" type of game; "The Mulldoon Legacy", "McMurphy's Mansion" and "Cranston Manor" are a trinity that spring to mind.

I downloaded the latest version of Mansion then available (version 2) and struck up a player/author email exchange with the creator Derek Barley, who has been very receptive to feedback. The good news is that the latest version (which Derek is shortly to upload to IFDB) is completable and as near to bug free as any game that I have ever played. The plot involves a slimy property developer named Brookes, a Gordon Gecko type character who would presumably consider Wall Street a glorification rather than a satire. Brookes has forged your late aunt's (the erstwhile owner of Gharston Manor, your new home) signature and stolen her back door key to illegally enter your new property, replete with dodgy purchase documents. It is up to you, with more than a little help from your Aunt Agatha, to send him packing.

There are no geckoes but there is a cute green frog, a red admiral butterfly and a large bee to be found in the grounds of the Hall, as well as a series of ornamental pools, a hedge maze and a brick building, which Derek informs me bears no deliberate relation to Crowther's original. Inside the property there are many rooms to explore and slowly the story develops as you solve each new problem. Derek's love of nature is obvious as you explore the house and grounds. This is a charming old school type adventure with modern user-friendly features. Mansion's descriptions are very evocative without being overdone, for instance The Fountain Pool: "This is the highest of a series of pools, constructed so that each will flow into the next. Willow trees lean over the edge of the pool, and large boulders add a rugged, wild look. The house can be reached to the north and west, and the lower pools are arrayed down the hill to the south. A thick growth of shrubs to the east makes it almost, but perhaps not entirely, impossible to move that way. The fountain pool is completely full of muddy, stagnant water." The slightly spooky feel of the game is handled with subtlety and thus with deftness. Near the beginning of the game, probably before you have even entered the mansion proper, there is a "definite chill in the air" in one location which is a subtle harbinger of what awaits you inside. The large eucalyptus which has smashed its way through the glass roof of one building is apparently based on a real-life scenario inside one of the large greenhouses that Derek's aunt owned.

The parser usually understands different verbs and noun synonyms and I was rarely stumped for want of phrasing something correctly. Being written in Inform, there are the standard GET and DROP ALL, BACK and FULL SCORE commands available. The odious Brookes is well described as well; his character delineation creates a strong incentive (at least it did for me) to send him on his way and to keep playing through to the end. The strong impression of a large, rambling house in the country has stayed with me post completion, which is a far from common occurrence in my case. There are also some amusing off-the-wall responses to failed attempts (check out the moose head in the Games Room, for instance).

In conclusion, this is an old school game with all of the trappings that Millennials have come to claim as their right. There are no tiresome hunger, thirst and lamp timers, no hard or soft locks and no deaths. There are some very clever puzzles here, as I have already intimated. Long, chaining problems seem to be something of an anachronism in the modern game world, but Mansion employs the oft overlooked technique very well. There are shades of Dr. Jonathan Partington and Andy Phillips (without the gore in the latter's case!) in some of the set pieces contained herein. High praise indeed. This is a medium sized, rather difficult and very well written text adventure with an interesting, overarching back story and some satisfying puzzles. I hope we will hear more from Derek in the future.