Stone of Wisdom

I beta-tested this game. This is the best ADRIFT game I've seen in a while. It feels like a nice little slice taken from a Zork-like universe, with lamps and stone dungeons and a troll and little people and so on. There's conversation, treasure, and a satisfying map.

A lot of time Adrift games seem to be trying to get you to do something specific but won't let you actually do it without struggling for the right command. Thankfully, that didn't happen here!

It's like a nice-sized slice of old-fashioned game, not too hard, not too easy. Worth downloading ADRIFT for.

Stone of Wisdom starts off like a fairly standard old-school text adventure. You're given a quest to find a magic item (the titular stone), as well as three objects to help you along the way. There isn't much motivation provided for why you need to find the item, although the queen does promise you your freedom if you bring it back. But why is she asking you? Well, it appears you've done her a favor before, but the game doesn't go into the details. Presumably this backstory is contained in the two earlier games in the Bash series (which I have not played).

Even not knowing the background, though, the beginning isn't that much different from a lot of the quest-driven text adventures from the 1980s. Or, frankly, from a lot of classic fairy tales. And in both fairy tales and old-school text adventures, it's generally the journey that matters most, not the beginning or motivation (or even, sometimes, the end).

Stone of Wisdom contains several amenities that feel modern and not the kind of thing you would have seen in a 1980s-era text adventure, though. Perhaps these are naturally a part of the ADRIFT language; I couldn't tell. (This was my first ADRIFT game.) But I appreciated the automap - especially the ability to travel long distances across the map just by clicking the location that was my destination. Also, the auto-complete feature was occasionally annoying but mostly helpful. I never had the inclination to turn it off, although that was an option.

So, in general, this is an old-school text adventure with a more modern interface. The puzzles felt mostly straightforward and of the old-school variety, too, although a few of them were more involved and thus a bit stronger. Regardless, I did not need the walkthrough. The game is also quite gentle with you: It warns you before you're about to put yourself in an unwinnable state. It also guides you in some places with the puzzles. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)if you try to attack the troll with the sword the game suggests using the magic ring instead.

Overall, I found Stone of Wisdom to be a well-implemented old-school text adventure with a classic plot and setting and some modern features to ease gameplay. I enjoyed it.