The Familiar

Fun little puzzler with a cute back story: you've been sent down into a cavern to complete some sort of spooky family coming-of-age ritual by summoning a familiar to be your lifetime magical companion. The trouble is, you haven't a clue about how to do it - so you've got to figure out the moves by yourself, using the disparate selection of objects lying around you.

It's a single location escape room, decently written, with an old-school feel: basically use every object in every combination until you work out what you're supposed to do. You can summon your familiar at any point in the came, but the outcome will be different depending on how you have set things up; the alternative endings add to the fun. I didn't manage to finish the game - it seems quite easy to get stuck and there is no help available. If I had a lot of time and patience then I could probably crack my way through with brute force, but as it is, I'll have to leave this review unstarred until inspiration strikes and I manage to progress (some in built hints would make playing a less frustrating experience).

There are a few little buggy bits here and there (eg you can get on the altar and drop things there, but can't pick them up again unless you get off the altar; you can use down as a direction off the altar, even though you're told 'You can't go that way' when you do so, you can put all your stuff in the unreachable crack in the roof but you can't get the thing that is already there without solving a lengthy puzzle). Nothing critical (unless that's the reason I'm stuck...) but nevertheless a tidy-up of those little bits would add some polish overall.

If you're in the mood for some good old-fashioned object-based puzzle solving, and you have some patience, then this could be worth a look.