Go to the game's main page
Review
I suspect that this may be a pseudonym, after I had a panic-inducing moment where something I posted in the author’s forum was liked by someone who I didn’t think was an author and who would write a game like this.
This was the first game on my personalized list, but I thought it was charming and wanted to take it slow.
This is an ADRIFT game, which means it comes with that ADRIFT style where precise verb noun combinations are needed and Inform’s and TADS’s automatic feedback systems aren’t in place. So you have to poke around.
This is a fantasy pastiche (with an especially funny moment where the game loads music by Peter, Paul and Mary and invokes the wizard Google) where you are teleported to another world and asked to bring a compass to a wizard.
While the storyline resembles a fantasy teen novel, the game itself is well-adapted to parser fans. It has traps you can fall into without knowing for sure if they are traps, and requires careful experimentation and searching, but it also has multiple puzzle solutions.
I had hoped to do most of the work on my own, and asked a few early hints, but ended up heading to the walkthrough around the bank segment. Given more time, I probably would have just left this open for a month and poked at it.
I definitely don’t prefer ADRIFT or Quest games for their systems, which often frustrate my gameplay style, but I have grown accustomed to their style, and they work remarkably well for menu-based systems (ADRIFT more than Quest).
This game was charming overall, and I had a good time playing it.
-Polish: The eternal bane of most ADRIFT games.
+Descriptiveness: I thought the game was well-described.
+Interactivity: I was often frustrated, but when I took it very slowly, it was fun.
+Emotional impact: I found it charming
+Would I play again? Why not? From the other scores I can see this early on, I might be in the minority, but I got a kick out of this game.
