Codex Crusade

This game was in a poll for games that need more reviews.

In this game, you play as a lowly librarian who has been tasked by a mysterious stranger with finding the Babylon Book, which contains all stories that can ever be written.

This is meant to be the first in a three-part series. The bulk of the game takes place in a bizarre student cafeteria where history, magic, and collegiate life mingle.

The game uses a lot of styling, and has cycling links, background images, music, and a lot of text boxes where you can type what you want. I'm not sure how often the game checks what's in the type boxes; I had one puzzle where for sure it mattered, but others didn't.

The story is madcap and surreal, so it can be fun but also hard to follow at times. I wasn't quite sure how I ended up in the cafeteria, or why I couldn't leave it; and I encountered many things before I knew how to make use of them.

But, this is fairly compact, and it's not too hard to explore everything even though there's a lot. So I was able to figure out things in the end.

I definitely think I'd play the next few games. The one thing that I wish were a little different was the many times where I saw a cool feature (especially text boxes) and didn't know if it was 'cool feature just to have fun with that is only used for characterization' or 'essential puzzle component'.

This was a strange thing to experience! It’s about a humble librarian’s assistant’s intern finding a strange and special book. Much of the game is in a weird cafeteria… at the bottom of the library? With alchemy and … fight scenes. Against an elevator bouncer called Jorge.

There are some fun bits, including alchemy, but there were bugs as well. After playing through multiple fight scenes with Jorge and fainting every time, I woke up to no text on the screen. Just a status bar and background image. And no way to get out.

Also, if you’re doing alchemy but are only holding one ingredient, once you’ve placed in that ingredient you are stuck in a forever loop you can’t escape.

I would play through any sequels that are made. It’s actually a fairly fun game, where background images actually are fairly good and sound effects (although weird) actually contribute (I don’t often play with sound, but of the ones I have played with, I think only DOL-OS is better for me).

Played: 7/9/24
Playtime: 45min, two restarts due to bugs

I was immediately won over by the sly, subversive wit that permeates the piece. It is nominally modern, but also medieval, and slides across its academia/occult knowledge/farce vibes with confidence and panache, dropping academic treatises and pop culture references with equal weight. It’s a quest for a portentious tome in the bowels of a library you are interning at. You need to make porridge, as is usually required in these things. There’s fights, snotty students, amusingly off-kilter puzzles. Two quick samples that I snorted in delight at: “[RE granola]The loudest, crumbiest of all the snacks.” “the medieval peasant you keep in your head for dialectical purposes cackles at you,”

It’s also, unfortunately, intrusively buggy in one of its central puzzles. In one early section, you are asked to concoct something. If you explore out of order, you can find yourself carrying the wrong ingredients for your puzzle solving mixture, with no way to replace incorrect items. In the course of decoding its mild complexity, I twice found myself in endless loops, unable to click free and needed to restart. This early in the game, not a huge problem but certainly jarring and unwelcome. If appearing in a longer work, would be game ending.

Even when not outright blocked, I was sometimes treated to buggy text as well, the following appearing after a paragraph of normal text:
"(set: the recipe card,jerky to it - jerky
what I can only presume to be internal code.

So yeah, a flawed experience, but honestly the rest of it is so witty and good-natured it was easy enough to forgive. The graphical presentation is pleasing, the use of sound amusing and deftly employed. A little more polish and it would be an unambiguous recommend. Will keep my eye out for promised subsequent chapters.