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.