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Review
Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 26 Review
Style: Parser Hybrid
Played: 7/17/26
Playtime: 45m, won after dying a few times
Ok, two scenarios. Scenario 1: Earth is far older than we give it credit for. Sometime before dinosaurs a race with opposable thumbs advanced to near-magical scientific capabilities before being erased from the fossil record. Then, Renaissance Italy somehow discovered some artifacts from that time. Scenario 2: In the far future, the human race develops near-magical scientific capabilities before suffering an apocalypse. An impossible number of years after that, humanity recreates Renaissance Italy who discover artifacts from this prior civilization. In either case, intrigue ensues!
What a delightfully weird and ambiguous setup to a spacial puzzle of infiltrate/steal/escape! Throw in some elemental spirits and we are COOKING. This is a pretty tight navigation/chase puzzle of securing a mysterious weapon, then using it to evade capture and escape. If you can effect a rescue in the process so much the better. I would say the UI is indispensable and effective here. You get a map, and a parser gameplay paradigm, augmented with hyperlink help. This kind of UI, when done well, smooths some of the potential gotchas with parser gameplay like verb guessing and sussing important nouns from background chaff, and soft steers the goals of the piece. I found AW to be done VERY well on this count. A compact but effective dashboard adjacent to the > prompt, married to a compact but effective map, including foes. Your goal is never in doubt, the enemy and object parameters reliably communicated, leaving a playground of experimentation and timing to work through.
The work is brief, requires some restart/undo trial and error, and delivers legit feelings of accomplishment when successful. The text is spare, injected with just enough wry playfulness to keep things bubbling along crisply and succinctly. While the HOW of accomplishment is very much the crux of the game, the WHAT of it is conveyed naturally and subtly without contradicting or muddying itself. Doing so this effortlessly is much harder than it looks. I found it to be very well conceived, implemented and communicated, leading to a very immersive puzzle solving flow. With just enough weird chrome to keep it from becoming some kind of intellectual-only exercise.
Just one buggy artifact to report: the UI dashboard disappears on RESTART, requiring a full QUIT to reappear. Invisiclues also provided, which is always a welcome touch. In this case not consulted, but having them available is appreciated. I never know when my IF competence will abandon me. All in all, a nifty, short, rewarding game.
