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Review
Wonderful, exciting Infocom pirate game with sporadic romance elements., February 3, 2016This Infocom game nails the pacing. The game always felt exciting. You play a young woman searching for her father who is abducted by pirates. You carry out increasingly bold tasks throughout the game, and, as a player, I felt excited at my ability to be part of the action instead of being helpless on the side.
The game has two main areas: a ship, and a house. Events are tightly scripted and well-thought-out to keep the action flowing. The tight pacing may require frequent saving.
I found the game slightly easier than usual for Infocom; however, I was stumped twice in the middle (around points 16-19). It took about a week or a bit less of playing on and off to finish it (total time around 4-5 hours).
Be warned that this game uses Infocom's piracy protection, so you need access to the 'feelies' to solve key puzzles in the game. I used the Lost Treasures of Infocom app, which has the feelies included as images.
The romance novel aspects were infrequent, mostly resorting to ardent glasses, although right around the 16-19 point range where I got stuck, things got a bit heated as I was losing, but the game avoids anything explicit.
Overall, one of my favorite Infocom games, probably due to the great writing and simpler (but rewarding) puzzles.
Comments on this review
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I played this very recently and I think I got stuck in the same place as you. :) I didn't have any problems with looking for hints, though, after I'd exhausted everything I could think of (and I'm still ambivalent about the solution I missed. I sorta see why I should have been able to solve it, but totally know why that simply didn't occur to me). Naturally, my hat is off to you for choosing not to resort to them.
Funnily enough, I solved the feelies-necessary puzzle without even realising that I had the clue in the feelies. I just did things that I thought were obvious to some objects around me that seemed to be implemented, and hey presto.
Did you notice the game has different endings? They mostly hinge on your actions in the endgame.
