Our Lady of Thorns

The setting is so vibrant and lovingly made that it's a pleasure to just exist in the game space, murder notwithstanding. So beautifully textured and described, nary a "I don't see any such thing" in sight. I experienced some tension between what I thought the game was signaling I could/couldn't do and what was required for a few puzzles, but the overall package is so well-crafted that all is forgiven.

I didn't play any of the Spring Thing games until after Spring Thing finished, to get a little more neutrality. This one was one of the winners, so I was interested in playing it.

I had a bit of trepidation going in because I've historically struggled with complex timed murder games in IF; I'm think of Varicella and Make it Good, mostly.

I was pleased that this game had helpful guidance early on and I was able to have some success on my own. The game nudges you on things and places you can go to and do next.

At one point I messed up the online interpreter by undoing many times in a row while messing with the tab (a problem with parchment, not the game itself), so I restarted, and that gave me the confidence to just use the walkthrough and see the rest of the game. I'm glad I did; this game seems like one designed for careful exploration and note-taking, things I'm not too good at.

I do like mystery games and this is the kind that is mostly solved by doing puzzles using information in books and through things found in exploration. It does require looking under things (something I typically don't enjoy in large games with tons of furniture) but it is hinted when you need to do so.

The writing is often workmanlike, which isn't to say that it's bad (the flashback memories of Aelred are wonderful), but that due to the large nature of the game and the ascetic setting, writing is often utilitarian and sparse.

The time aspect isn't as big of a threat as it seems, if anyone else is worried as I was. Essentially it divides the game into segments of 'everyone is available to talk to' and 'everyone is away and you can search around'.

Overall, it's clear why it won.

The Name of the Rose is a strange inspiration for a murder mystery, because it isn’t. Like most Eco, it’s lavish, loosely interwoven tapestries of intertextuality as a mode of lifetexturing intellection hung in such a sequence as to imply progression for those in need of instruction. It’s more a mystery in the sense of medieval mystery plays, biblical stories breathing life into everyday scenes. William of Baskerville is precisely the joke, the Doylean deduction inspires the crimes towards a shared spiritual frenzy, whereas the real motive is and always will be a book.

This somewhat awkward inheritance is where I think the central tension of Our Lady of Thorns lies. On one hand, a murder mystery in a medieval monastery offers an excellent tinkerbox for the intrepid adventurer: the eight offices provide a carefully orchestrated timeline for you to explore, understand, then optimize; the setting is a redolent admixture of ambient physicality so readily repuposable to puzzling, with a Latin motto indicating how to open a secret passage and stained glass scenes indicating how to open a secret passage; and the extensive gardens and botanical knowledge thereby trained offers a grounded intuitional network for several satisfying guessworks. On the other hand, the weight of simulating so specifically stimulating a space stresses out the story’s modest ambitions: in lieu of the glossaries, the place is painted in vague accumulations of time, from “The stone floor is worn smooth by centuries of feet” to “The steps dip in the centre from generations of sandaled feet” to “worn floorboards where chests were dragged back and forth over the years”, repetitions dulling the atmosphere fogged; and the central motive for the mystery, that a brother is stealing psalters produced as the “primary source of priory income” to support his struggling family, isn’t really accurate, English monasteries didn’t make books as commercial objects on spec, as it were, but rather as gifts to patrons or to fulfill a specific commission from an important figure, and by the fourteenth century this gift would probably have been a book of hours rather than a psalter, so while the scenario isn’t implausible still it relies on a vague high monasticism rather than a genuine engagement with the monastery as a living social institution.

Of course, an interactive fiction game playing at a medievalism that vagues the prior to prioritize the puzzles is a story worn smooth by centuries of feet. If anything, it’s the delicate sense of craftsmanship that pervades Our Lady of Thorns which sufficiently stirs you from your default stupor to summon such complaints. Lucky we, treated to so laudsable a labor of love constructed from months of “ritual, timing, prayer, silence. It feels both comforting and confining. You’re not sure which feeling prevails.”

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/16/26
Playtime: 2.75hrs, used walkthrough for goosing, failed in tombs (repeatedly, due to remote open door), eventually undid to try an accusation but soft-locked out? Officially score 43/55

The closer you are to something, the more unique it becomes. This is a completely reasonable compromise between physics and evolution. In the unthreatening distance, we need know nothing more than ‘cow’ or ‘coyote.’ The fact that light attenuates over range makes it biologically convenient to deprioritize. (Not ignoring you, Sharp-Eyed Hawks, but until you start playing IF I don’t have much to say to you.) Up close though? Boy do I want to SEE small thorns before finding them other ways.

This works metaphorically too. To my wife, for whom all IF is “Colossal Cave” (technically, it’s all ‘that thing JJ does that is at least quiet’), OLOT’s charms might not feel so unique. To me, who is so close to parser development I may as well be wearing it, authorial voice is a strong distinguisher. OLOT’s voice is really polished, most obviously in its authoritative command of its setting. The monastery is so well conceived and complete, I might accuse it of being implemented from a real-world floorplan. The language used to describe it is consistently jargony, in a way that sets the scene AND slowly integrates us into monastic life. Obviously, I liked this, but I found the work’s more subtle writing even more impressive.

If you’ve consumed some amount of my reviews, you know I am fond of what I call the “Implementation Horizon.” The level of detail (and inherent cuing needed) that the game operates at. Parser players are well comfortable with the idea that we will never get thread count when examining sheets. We agree to operate at the level of the game. It is up to the game to 1) cue us where that level is and 2) then be consistent about it. OLOT takes a specific tack here: the level is deeper than it appears, and absent cuing that might suggest it. But it is, to my playthrough, completely consistent. This meant that I kind of had to discover the Implementation Horizon on my own? Learn the dialect of this game as it were. I needed a walkthrough goose to get there, but once I did, the consistency of it was reassuringly firm and nearly always rewarded. This had the effect of building a very coherent, very robust world to knock about in, whose unspoken limits became as much a part of the scenario as the prayer schedule. I don’t know if I’ve seen it done better.

On top of this is imposed a clock of sorts - the day resolutely dribbles by, alternating between daily duties (where the cast is conducting their daily chores, and available for interview) and Offices (where the cast is collected in the Chapel, leaving their locations unguarded and explorable). It is a nice gameplay feature: predictable, alternating NPC states that you can exploit to different ends. It also marks a game timer - if you do not solve the crime in time Cruel Tempus will halt your investigation.

Yes, you are solving a Monastery Murder - a classic of the ‘closed setting mystery’ genre. You must establish method of death, motive and suspect via decidedly lo-tech forensic work of tasting and smelling. As well as the usual interviews and poking your damn novice nose where it doesn’t belong. There is a large cast. Almost too large to be manageable, but wisely with at least a job-personality quirk combo to sort things. I found it (mostly) really well constructed: puzzles integrated naturally into the setting, deep curiosity both needed and rewarded, red herrings and dead ends sprinkled realistically throughout, but unambiguous clues once found.

I felt a few glitches where puzzle solutions might seem to run counter to the setting, most notably the completely casual ‘climbing on altars’ move which, as a testament to the writing, I felt REALLY bad doing. Glitches like that were very much the exception though. I liked that disturbing your Brothers’ rooms might trigger their suspicions. That points were awarded for monky behaviors unrelated to the mystery. That you spend so much time smelling plants.

As a way to convey how well-tuned the prose was, let me share my very frustrating endgame performance. Patience, dots will connect. I found my way into the Crypt during an afternoon Office, meaning all monks collected in the Quire. I had foolishly left a door open that I should have shut. This put me into a tight box: I needed to explore and escape a dark crypt while the game timer only had limited turns before my snooping was discovered and Game End.

This awkward situation meant 1) try a bunch of stuff until 2) timer expires and you lose, then 3) UNDO a WHOLE LOT to give yourself a tight block of additional moves. Repeat. A Lot. Eventually I find my way out, into the in-Progress Office where I am informed hey, I can SHOUT an accusation to solve the mystery! Only I couldn’t. Despite being told BY THE GAME that I could end things (and having assembled enough clues to have confidence I could do so), I ended on a failure. Jeebus was that frustrating! I think it was a bug?

Now this kind of endgame kludginess could reasonably be expected to poison the whole experience. Backing into a hard time limit because of something I neglected to do 10s of moves earlier, needing to recycle with UNDOs SO MANY TIMES, eventually getting to a legitimate solving position, only to be soft-locked OUT by a seeming bug. Here’s where I connect the dots back to the writing.

Thanks to the cumulative effect of the previous gameplay not only was I thoroughly invested in the solution, the constraints I backed into made me MORE motivated to find it! Even after the ultimate failure, I kind of ignored that, mentally readied my accusation, and read SOLUTION. I credited myself with a “Justice” ending that the game did not award me! I solved the mystery IN SPITE OF THE GAME, and with no hard feelings! In the face of all that mechanical awkwardness, I left the game satisfied and impressed.

DESPITE A BLOCKING BUG AT THE VERY VERY END, the writing had laid such a strong foundation, the mystery had clicked together so smoothly, my overriding takeaway was “hey, that was pretty good.” It was not diminished (much) by its glitches. How many times can writing in IF survive that? DOTS CONNECTED.

Spaceship: Hermes
Vibe: Echoes of Eco
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : The ‘cannot SHOUT’ bug at the end is most obviously in need of addressing.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

I was intimidated from looking at the long (relative to other entries in the Thing) length and that you could mess up due to improperly managing the many moving parts like monks moving around and a strict time limit. But the setting intrigued me, so I bravely ventured forth.

It turns out that managing these parts is intuitive once you get down to it. The monks spend the entire game staying at their assigned locations until it’s time for them to go and sing choir. I personally found the schedule to be generous, starting in the wee hours of the morning until seven in the evening. You can freely look at the current time and when events take place through shortcut commands, and can wait until the hour choir offices start to minimize entering “Z” repeatedly. I meandered around a lot and was stuck in a couple of spots but finished with 30 minutes left before the deadline. Most people will probably get to one of the endings at a faster pace than I did.

To progress, you solve puzzles around the priory to get evidence, so you do have to look under several nooks and crannies, but thankfully you don’t have to find absolutely everything in order to accuse someone. I was stuck for a while on two parts, both related to (Spoiler - click to show)getting into guarded places by giving gifts, and had to use hints. Although, to be fair, one of these instances was because I completely forgot the flashback hint when examining basil, so I didn’t know what to say and the hint seemed to come out of left field until I did a replay. And as for the other, I just didn’t know you could give a cat to somebody (I did “SHOW CAT TO WILFRED,” assumed that was simply a moment of characterization fluff and moved on until I saw the gift hint). I also had to read hints about searching the barrels. Additionally, the first time I went to the crypt I didn’t catch a vital piece of evidence, thought “that was cool but pointless” after I escaped, then looked at the hints and saw I missed a thing, after which I reloaded a save right before going down there in the first place.

In my first playthrough, I spent a large amount of time having information about one person in particular, but didn’t find any connection to the game’s inciting incident. (Spoiler - click to show)Ultimately I pretty much stumbled into a solution by being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. The person who found me, who was also the culprit, attempted murder after seeing the evidence I was holding but divine intervention saved me. So my process of discovery went from “how does all this stuff lead to poisoning a kind old man” → Hugh tries to kill me after seeing I had the evidence to report him → “well if he reacted like THAT I guess that’s how there’s a corpse.” After getting the mercy ending, I started a new game to do things more efficiently and to see if I could get him to confess, incriminate himself, or open up to me, but after a while concluded that there’s no such thing implemented (and that it’s not that kind of game).

OLoT is a hefty parser IF that should be appreciated slowly. It would be best to play it not as a deduction game or a cross-examination of peoples’ alibis, but as a free-roam exploration with object manipulation as the primary element. Joel Burton is definitely an author to watch!