Ka

This game is composed of a set of completely linear, self-contained puzzles: your goal, in a nutshell, is to solve puzzles in order to get through each and every obstruction preventing you from going west.

Now, none of the puzzles really stood out. There was one that was way, way too similar to a puzzle from Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold, and another one involved a very vaguely described board game being played, which totally broke the immersion for me. The magic system never really added much to the game: it was just there to provide an extra obvious move for you to do before continuing on with a puzzle. But, these puzzles may be great for people who are still getting used to IF.

But, this game is saved enough to get three stars from me by the very impressive atmosphere. There are very, very few (if any) objects or locations in this game that I didn't have a detailed picture of in my head, something that I cannot say even for many of my favorite works of IF. The atmosphere also gave a strange feeling of emotion that I can't really describe in my review and must be experienced through the game to understand (assuming it works on you).

I think this is a good game to show people getting into IF, and a good game to study if you want to think about describing your world. But, for puzzle design, it isn't impressive.