The Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix

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...

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