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Review
What is this?
Codex Crusade is a surreal Twine romp taking place at the University of Turin, Georgia (not the other one). Due to shenanigans involving the other Turin your library has recently come into possession of a large number of rare books, and of course not everyone’s happy about it. You, the librarian’s assistant intern, have been tasked to descend into the depths of the university and retrieve this tome – what could go wrong?
Codex Crusade is set up much like a traditional parser game; you can explore spaces (although without the usual cardinal directions), add items to your inventory, and use said items to solve puzzles. The whole thing is dressed up with comic academic theming, which I found entertaining despite the fact that I can tell a lot of it is going over my head. (If you have a background in philosophy or medieval studies I suspect this game is hysterical.)
Unfortunately, I ran into a showstopping bug fairly early on. I have the wrong item in my inventory for a puzzle and I can’t seem to get rid of it, but the game won’t let me pick up the right item until the Doritos are gone. I’ll come back to this later, maybe – per Mathbrush’s review it looks like it’s possible to finish the game, so if I get that puzzle right on the first try I should be able to advance. But for now I’m going to put it down and move on. But even with this bug it’s a fun and witty game, and proof that the comic-puzzler-parser model does not in fact have to be a parser game.
