Ziege's Mansion

Ziege’s Mansion earned three stars from me largely due to its very clean, very pretty packaging. The visual aspect of the game was neat and glossy, and added significantly to the experience. The framework of the story was interesting, and the text was solidly written and well translated. The background information on the characters provided on the website gave an added a degree of depth to the story, and offered some interesting potential. Unfortunately, the game itself was a little light on substance.
It is a light game in every aspect, easy on the eyes, easy on the mind, and (almost) completely lacking in challenge. The dangers in the game can be easily avoided by paying attention to the text and using common sense, and even if you take the wrong turn it’s easy to replay. I played through the whole game a few times in the space of half an hour, following all of the options and hunting for ways to die. (Spoiler - click to show)There were two.
I do think it was worth a playthrough for the artistry alone, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the storybook quality. Just don’t expect too much from the content.

This appears to be a web version of what I'm guessing is an actual CYOA book. The presentation is very slick with appropriate images, and clean buttons and borders. The text is offered in Portuguese and English, although it took me a few minutes to guess that a white flag with a red cross is England because I'm a dumb American...(Could I really have gotten through nearly forty years without ever learning the flag of England? Perhaps it's because English people don't shove it in people's faces and have it burned in effigy in other countries and emblazon it across their giant car hoods like we do. My apologies, England: Your flag is understated and stylish, just like your culture...but I digress.) This story was not done with any known development system (it's labelled as "custom")...but I'd love to see a template for Twine that produced something of this quality.

It's one of those where you die with little warning by entering the wrong room, and there's no "rewind" option, so I did not finish in the limited time I took with it. I am impressed though, at the very well-put together package.