Metamorphoses

A text adventure with a twist: without giving too much away, the player has much more freedom to imagine what can be done with the objects they find than in the average parser game.

Metamorphoses takes place in a fascinating and mysterious setting, a medieval/early modern world of alchemy and of the four humours. You are in a house filled with strange and wonderful objects and paintings, which enhance the gameplay considerably. I would have liked to have known more about the building you are in, and how it came to be as it is, and more backstory about the playing character and the Master more generally. In Emily Short's Bronze, for comparison, the castle and the objects within it are more closely linked to the story.

It is a short game, and according to the 'help' function, not a difficult one; I actually found it harder than I expected, perhaps because the setting is so mysterious that the actions you have to perform are not always self-explanatory, and also there is the extra challenge provided by the sheer number of permutations that the game allows.

I admired this game mostly for the clever idea and for the gorgeous descriptions and setting that I have come to expect from an Emily Short game.