The Wise-Woman's Dog

I only hand out five-star ratings when a game has truly blown me away. This one did. I don't know where to start. I am so impressed by what the author has managed to put together.

• I love the environments. They are rich and detailed and I can tell the author has spent a lot of time on research. The village and city feel lived in, and like they exist even without me being there (as opposed to so many other text adventure environments that feel crafted for the player to conquer.)

• I love the varying-difficulty puzzles, and that I can finish the game without solving all of them. That really leaves me wanting to come back for more.

• I love the way the author manages to convey scale and events and things going on without overburdening the player with details.

• I love that the game focuses on the life of the everyday people, rather than the great men history ends up being written about. This is a perspective I want more of.

• I loved the footnotes that filled me in on background and made the world feel even more alive. It might even be the case that the world implemented in the game isn't as "rich and detailed" as I think, only the footnotes ended up complementing it and making it more rich and detailed by association.

• The game is polished. It supports a smaller set of verbs (with things like smell and listen being synonyms for examine, I think?) but the ones that are supported are well-implemented throughout.

Granted, the main narrative (save your human) faded out in the distance as I explored the environments and helped solve other people's problems. If games are about what you do, then this is a life-in-the-bronze-age simulator more than anything. But that's fine! I wanted that. I didn't know I wanted that, but I did.

The main narrative still served as a useful backdrop and motivation to go exploring, and you bet that once I had what I needed to save my human, I went back to save her. I only wish I could have continued to play beyond that point! I had left things unresolved all over the place!

There were also a few places where small things behaved unexpectedly (spells didn't work although they should have, nobody reacting to a dog barking where dogs are not allowed, etc.) but overall, given the scale of the game and how well the rest of it works, I am entirely willing to look past those things.

I will now start up a new run and, erhm, not save my human, instead focusing on figuring out everything that's happening in this mystical yet familiar world.