Words of Power

Baf's Guide

Easy, generous game-play, a reasonably effective plot, and a nifty magic mechanic combine to make this game accessible and charming. The game offers interesting graphical enhancements to the standard features of interactive fiction, including images of all the NPCs and a set of buttons that simplify spell-casting.

Not all aspects of the work shine equally -- the prose has its rough moments, object descriptions tend to be little more than restatements of what you already saw in the room description, and some elements of the fantasy setting seem a bit tired. There is enough that's fresh to keep the game going, however, and it's short and entertaining enough not to wear out its welcome.

-- Emily Short

IF-Review
Casting Call
Words of Power has a wonderful way of allowing you to try something, anything (it seemed), and making that work. There was one particularly tricky puzzle that seemed "timed" but really wasn't, with at least one alternate solution taken into account -- it changes the problem but doesn't get you completely out of trouble. I appreciate that, and I appreciate a game which takes pains not to let any player get stuck and miss out on the story. It's very much a "no player left behind" feel, but it does work to keep you progressing through what turns out to be a very interesting story.
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SPAG
Here is a fantasy game (sort of -- there's magic, and a talking cat), but it is set on a planet built like a science fiction planet, with a different diameter and a more distant sun. The effect, an impression of great age and distance, is both beautiful and melancholy. In fact, the whole map of the game is built on the same massive scale, with locations that encompass entire ruined cities and forests. Some elements of the story are a little too familiar, perhaps -- the race of forest-dwellers and the race of miners smacks of Tolkien, and other pieces of the backstory ring a little too familiar -- but not all of them. So on the whole the setting could have been more sharply imagined and better described, but there were enough intriguing elements to keep me engaged. I found that I liked it best if I mentally translated the descriptions into a kind of cinematic treatment, with many desolate landscape shots.
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