The Triskelion Affair

Some blurbs directly transmit what the game is going to be about, but others a little more challenging to decode. So it is with The Triskelion Affair, which starts out by saying you’ll be playing a “medieval detective”, implying a historical whodunnit; the genre tag, on the other hand, says it’s swords and sorcery, which put me in mind of mighty thews, dark sorcery, and greed. As I went through the game’s opening, going through an oddly-vague mission briefing that didn’t tell me what my mission was, courtesy of a martinet straight out of a British operetta, I looked for details that would clue me into the historical era of the setting, or indications that I’d soon be departing from my orders to engage in a bit of freebooting. This sense of uncertainty persisted until I finished the half hour or so prologue and entered into the game proper, which involves exploring a pillaged church to find a powerful magical artifact: in the backstory I was finally given before the adventure started in earnest, I learned that “a cleric, rogue, and two fighters traveled to St Cuthbert’s last week” bent on the same task as I was. So yeah, turns out I needn’t have worried, it’s just Dungeons and Dragons (specifically Grayhawk, I think, given that mention of St. Cuthbert), and the game features both the ropey implementation as well as the naïve but infectious enthusiasm you’d expect from a neophyte author motivated to produce a medium-sized game based on such a hoary premise.

Just to get the negatives out of the way first: this is an almost completely traditional game in terms of plot and gameplay, centering on an old-school dungeon crawl in search of a potent magic item of unexplained powers, which is also sought by some bad guys whose nature and motivations go completely unmentioned. The opening section adds a tiny bit of interest, allowing you to ride out from the headquarters of the army you’re apparently part of and stay a night in an inn before setting forth on your adventure, but it’s entirely on rails, and sticks so squarely to a generic DnD vibe that it doesn’t wind up providing much flavor.

The implementation is also pretty sloppy. Almost the first prompt in the game is “What is your full name, solider?”; there’s lots of unimplemented scenery, and examining certain object just gives a blank response rather than the default “you see nothing special” line; and there are mimesis-breaking touches like the sign in the stables reading “ask Hiram about Boarding”. Of course there’s an inventory limit, and odd touches like a lantern remaining the “south lantern” even after I’d picked it up from its perch on the wall. There’s nothing exactly game-breaking, but my progress was frequently blocked by a lack of clarity about what objects were around, wrestling with synonyms, or otherwise fighting the parser.

For all these criticisms, though, I can’t say I had a bad time with the Triskelion Affair. The puzzles are straightforward DnD stuff, with a bell-book-candle ritual livening up the plethora of locked doors with hidden keys, but sometimes you just want comfort food – similarly, the church cum dungeon is absolutely something you’ve seen before, but the attention to detail in terms of church architecture still made it fun to explore. And while it adds to the general slapdashery, I liked that there are a lot of red herrings and puzzle chains that don’t appear to go anywhere – I solved some puzzles to find a hidden pair of magical glasses, which didn’t do anything so far as I can tell. These optional bits ease the difficulty while making the game seem deeper than it is.

I can’t say in good conscience that the game design is strong throughout, mind: there are a couple read the author’s mind puzzles, and a few places where the game, annoyingly, seems to be actively trying to mislead the player (I’m thinking especially of getting the key from the fireplace in the hunting lodge, where the fact that X GRATE will give a different result than X FIREPLACE isn’t telegraphed, and the description saying that the fireplace was recently cleaned seems to indicate to the player that there’s nothing else to be found by poking around). And there’s a pointless yet annoying combat system that’s used for a single fight against a zombie, which you’re foreordained to win but which will see you drop a couple of inventory items you’ll later need to retrieve. Still, if you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for generic DnD adventure and a high tolerance for design and implementation issues that were old hat even in the 90s, the Triskelion Affair has a certain disheveled charm.