Curse of the Garden Isle

The current eruption of the Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii has led to lots of speculation that the goddess Pele is back and she's angry. But this game has taught me there is another form of Pele's Curse: if you take any local rocks away with you as souvenirs, bad luck will befall you. This scares the thieving tourists enough that many send the rocks back in the post: as a Hawaii tourist board employee, you need to drive around putting them back in their rightful places.

This is very much a postcard from Hawaii, both in size and style: an excuse to implement a "what I did on my summer vacation" as a text adventure. Not that there's anything wrong with that. "Bolivia By Night" is another really good example of that kind of thing. There is not much to do, puzzles aren't really difficult, and it's short, but well-written throughout.

This game drew my attention when I discovered that the 'provided map' is just google maps centered on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian islands.

This is not my favorite Veeder game, but it was enjoyable, both when I played on my own and then later at an IF meetup.

The game as-played seems to have two phases: an exploration phase, and an action phase. I found it necessary to google some locations in the game at different points, and google provided information that helped in some puzzles.

The game offers several methods of interaction, including one that may be time-limited.

If you like this game, I recommend Crocodracula. If you hate this game, I recommend An Evening At Ransom Woodingdean House. If you haven't played this game yet, I recommend Taco Fiction and this game.

Nice, short, atmospheric game. At first, you don't know what you are there to do, but this got me to explore around, do some mapping, look at things--but you find out soon enough what your goal is--[spoiler]I was immediately able to place 3 or 4 of the rocks, based on what I had learned about the island prior to going into the museum[/spoiler]. Just looking around was a big part of the puzzles. The subordinate goal gave me a laugh--I'm still looking for them.