Forbidden Lore

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Standard TADS Disclaimer: I am a TADS-stan. Reader, calibrate your assessment of my impartiality as you see fit.

This is a TADS jam about uncovering a deceased relative’s knowledge of a world’s secret history. It is AMBITIOUS in its aims. It is creating a pseudo-history of magic and prophecy in a library of reference materials, that you, the player, will read. It does so many hard things really, really well. It presents the player with multiple shelves of books, each with multiple tomes of interest, many with multiple relevant facts that build on each other in a patchwork narrative of history. And it improbably does it with minimal confusion. What could be a bottomless pit of disambiguation between shelves, books, titles and facts, for me, was instead a deeply responsive hierarchy of unique naming conventions, sly context assumptions and effective mnemonic shorthands. Despite continually referencing and re-referencing these things I almost never got tripped up in the wrong objects or dissonant responses. It honestly is kind of a technical tour de force just managing all those similar but different things.

Ok, I just said I was never tripped up. Crucially, I said by object reference. Tripped up on LORE, well, that is a whole different thing. This is a work whose lore includes country names, religious organization names, Important People names, NPC names, magic spell names - every last one of them made up. They are thankfully not similar to each other, much, but they ARE Fantasy Letter Salad. They are ALSO unforgiving in spelling, meaning when you need reference them (and manage not to confuse a place name for a character name or somesuch), you might type it in three or four times before getting it right. You will find yourself typing endless variations of >ask eyveru about kardevat

The lore itself is interesting enough, as these things go, but remember was dispensed piecemeal through exhaustive combing of maybe two dozen pretend books. Much like real academic study, the charge is in making connections between disconnected facts to drive new conclusions. Did you commit all those vowel-consonants to memory? Do you even remember which book provided which detail when future refresher is needed? No you did not and no you do not. This leaves you in an unenviable position: knowing there are details you need for the next puzzle, but having no idea where to find them again. So now… do you do ANOTHER FULL PASS of the library, hunting out the details you need?

Yes. Yes you do.

At this point, it inescapably starts to resemble homework. So much (re)reading, probably some note-taking to keep things straight, heaven forbid any misspellings on the way. All to tease out byzantine details and connections that you can turn into actionable conclusions! If you are clamoring for an ancient text academia simulator, Lore has you covered. It isn’t opaque, it’s reasonably clear what needs scratching. It’s just a chore to churn through the reference materials to find it. For me, it quickly became apparent that if I wanted anything to write about beyond library science after my two hour playthrough, I better consult the hint system.

This carried me for a while, past the virtual paper cuts of virtual page turning, but then other artifacts started rearing. The early ones were pretty inconsequential - an important NPC in a room described as unoccupied; weird posture changes. Then actual gameplay artifacts came up: being told you don’t know where something is, but being required to point another object at it and succeeding just by >point X at Y Then, there were HINT artifacts, where the game seemingly accepted a puzzle solution, but the hint system seemed ignorant of it and required a DIFFERENT solution.

Until finally, catastrophically, the hint system broke entirely. Going to the well once too often yielded

[Runtime error: string is too long
]

and repeat engagement responded with a cold “Nothing obvious happens.” The safety net had shredded. I was near the end of my timer at that point anyway, but hoo boy that seemed pretty final.

For all that, it would be inaccurate to say the game was a slog. In spite of all the mechanical slogging, there IS a charge in connecting unconnected facts. The puzzle play and emergent lore was entertaining, to a point anyway. The NPCs were kind of fun, and the physical descriptions and magic were cool. There were legitimate Sparks of Joy throughout. I think it may come down to are you a Tolkien reader that immerses in faux history, or are you a noob D&D player that just wants to throw fireballs? The former will find a lot to dig into here, in way more than 2 hrs, and if they successfully bypass the hint system maybe be ok? There are technical accommodations to make with it though, and you probably know yourself enough to decide if the lore is worth it. If not, it may be more… FORBIDDING LORE. Eh? Eh?

Played: 9/11/24
Playtime: 2hrs, looks like 1/2 threats defeated but hints disagreed
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/intrusive lookups, bug and lore
Would Play After Comp?: Unlikely, Imma go lob some Magic Missiles

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless