The Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix

I believe a lot of things that might not have as much hard evidence as some people might prefer. I believe the White Album is the best one the Beatles ever recorded. I believe a good dark beer is far superior to any IPA. I believe it’s worth getting involved in politics. But no matter what receipts you show me, I don’t think I will ever be able to truly believe that Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix (I will not type that correctly ever again) was written in four hours. I’m by no means accusing the authors of fraud, let me be clear, and I can see that it leverages a bunch of pre-written extensions so I can even see how the trick must have been done. And yet, when I contemplate what’s here – a remappable maze a la the best bit of Enchanter, an intuitive automap, thirty different library sections each with their own in-jokes, and a tightly-designed Dungeon-Keeper style metapuzzle bringing all of these pieces together – I am just in awe that this was entered into an EctoComp’s Petit Mort category (there’s a cool feelie too, though I believe those don’t count against the time limit at least).

The conceit here is that you’re a kobold-librarian midway up the totem-pole at the eponymous archive, which in addition to orderly daytime visits from scholars, is also subject to nightly raids by uncouth adventurers hell-bent on pillaging the place for lost artifacts and recondite secrets. Tonight, it’s your section’s turn in the barrel, so it’s up to you to construct a deathtrap that will rebuff the intruders and leave you well-positioned for advancement to Second Assistant Librarian. The most important thing to say about this premise is that it is delightful beyond all belief; the protagonist’s doughty self-importance, and their fancy little hat, are immediately winning, for one thing. The library is also an amazing character all its own; it’s laid out in a thematic grid, with alphabetically-incrementing nouns running along the east-west axis and a series of adjectives similarly running north-south. That means you start out in archaic languages, while going south sees you visit bio-languages, which in turn is west of bio-music and then bio-numerology. Libraries with unique layouts are among my interests (…why yes, I do love Name of the Rose, thanks for asking), and this is a great one, not least because the gags are good – archaic numerology was my favorite:

"Numerology ranks among the oldest fields of magical science—these tomes date back millennia! They contain more than a dash of unnecessary mysticism, although experiments done centuries later proved that avoiding beans really was necessary for good numerological work."

(I’ll just say it, Pythagoras was wrong, fava beans are delicious. Wait, unless that’s because the souls give them extra tastiness?)

All that is just flavor for the puzzle, of course – you don’t need to read a single book or pay attention to any of the room descriptions to solve the game – but they still make the process anything but dry. That’s helpful because the opening is a little intimidating; the instructions do step you through what you’re meant to be doing, but there are a lot of moving pieces so I was glad to have some solid jokes to enjoy while I was trial-and-erroring my way through the setup. The key mechanic here is that unlike in a tower defense game (or Lock and Key, this game’s clearest antecedent), you can’t set traps before the adventurers arrive: you’ve got a magic gong that opens up the secure chest where they’re kept, but that also is the signal for the baddies to start marching in. Instead, the setup phase is about preparing the layout, since you’ve go the magic ability to open and close passages between the various rooms (though only twenty rooms can be part of the maze at a time, which helps keep things manageable – an especially thoughtful limitation, actually, as I only just now remembered that the map is 3-D, since each section has a possible “above” and “below” location, too!)

This means that dealing with the adventurers isn’t just a waiting game, where you stab the Z key over and over and wait five minutes to find out whether you’ve already won – once they’re in the maze, you need to run to the area where the traps are kept, and then scramble deploy them even as those vicious miscreants are marauding through the passageways, ready to shoot you down if they catch the merest sight of you. This lends a pleasant dynamism to proceedings; even though the puzzle is pretty simple once you understand all the rules for how the traps work, and how the adventurers behave, implementing the solution still requires active thought to come up with and carry out your plan without getting skewered, and the details will vary based on how exactly you’ve constructed your maze. I wouldn’t say this gives the game replay value, exactly – there are only three traps at your disposal, and I’m pretty sure they need to be deployed in a specific way and in a specific order to attain victory – but it does mean that my playthrough felt like it was uniquely mine; I brought the adventuring party down in demonic oikology (which is to say, the interior decoration that most appeals to the mephitic taste), which seemed the appropriate place to do it.

All told, this is a heck of a clever game, marrying a lovely theme with engaging writing and a puzzle that made me feel smart. Most authors could spend 40 hours and still barely succeed at one of these pillars; to accomplish all in a tenth of that time is something miraculous – just as miraculous as me being able to spell the game’s name from memory: folks, believe me when I say you should drop everything and go play Labyrinthine Library of Xacklexendrewxixix!

Okay, I was close. Kinda.

It's been a while since I played; this review is based on an unfinished one I wrote back during Ectocomp when I'd just played the game. I was really fond, and I'm still amazed the authors managed to make it in four hours. There's a lot going on here. Granted, I've never used Inform so I don't know how easy these tricks were to pull off, but from the complexity of some, I wanna say "not easy at all".

It's a solid game. There's a map system and a trap system and adventurers who navigate your map/trap system who you must stymie, lest they steal your precious magical artifact! The rooms are are all charming and inventive (and even more excellent with the ALLTEXT option!). The central puzzle itself was really neat. It took me four tries to figure out, but was highly satisfying to solve.

The concept, where you're a monster who has to stop those pesky adventurers from raiding your home instead of the other way around, is also a good twist on your typical dungeon fantasy plot. As far as parser games go, this is a really unique one. I also love that detail where the strange letter spellings are actually based on standards for writing out ancient Mesopotamian or something like that. The most alien things are actually just relics of a distant human civilization. Pretty cool.

Playtime: ~30 min

There’s a lot to love in this game. It brings a fresh and unique puzzle concept, accompanied by delightful worldbuilding and a cute protagonist. There's also entertaining feelies that convincingly flesh out the bureaucratic fantasy setting.

However, I had a fair amount of friction points where I put a lot of time into an effort that was immediately revealed to be pointless. I think these could have been sanded out in the design phase, they didn't feel essential to the concept. Once that learning curve was over, it also felt like there wasn’t much else to do in the game.

But very much worth a play to see the central mechanic.

This game was pretty difficult but rewarding. It was entered in the La Petite Morte part of Ectocomp, which is surprising given its complexity.

In it, you have a large rectangular grid of a dungeon, and you have to make a map for adventurers to wander in. You have to destroy adventurers, but to reach the weapons you need to hit them, you have to make a path that adventurers can also take, and if they get the weapons, they win.

I was baffled at first, and had no clue what I was doing. I found that the adventurers follow close behind you and can kill you the instant they have line of sight. I also found that you can't throw the killing weapon unless you have line of sight.

So I was truly baffled until I read the hints on the Psionic weapon, and then things became a lot more clear.

Overall, this was pretty fun. My only sticking point was how hard it was to get started, but after that I liked the puzzle.

Now, that was something different! Instead of going through a dungeon, fighting your way through waves of monsters, and solving crazy puzzles, all for a measly reward... you shape up the maze and fix up some traps to stop some annoying adventurers from desecrating your place of work (and avoid loosing your job).

This is the kind of game that is deceptively small (and so darn hard!), the kind you could spend hours trying out different combinations of maze formation and traps location, to stop adventurers from getting to the treasure. It is both a great brain-picker and a time-waster...

How this was done in only 4h is a mystery. Even with freely available extensions, which were mostly made by the author, the amount of content and writing within the game is impressive, and honestly insane. Do you have access to some time-wrap or something? Can you share?

Anyway, I'm going back to try to foil the adventurer's plans again...