Adventure in the Crypt

Adventure in the Crypt, and Adventure in the Crypt - Hard, are games for a beginner of the genre. It was a submission to TALP 2026. TALP is a competition to make beginner friendly games that encourage new users to the genre. The puzzles in the game are not overtly difficult and are mechanical in nature. The game play is largely guided by your in game guide, Raman the Shaman, who helps you take the next right step and encourages you for doing the right thing. The hard version adds a front loaded puzzle that has you finding the first key to enter the crypt. The regular version has the crypt door unlocked. The first key can be found by exploring the village bazaar. Ramen guides you here as well. The game features a tutorial mode and a cat themed easter egg giving bonus points.

The project file and studio for editing the game are externally available to study how the game was made. The game was created using a custom game engine and studio meant to make it easy for anyone to create classic text adventures featuring mechanical objects that can be integrated into the world governance.

Like several other games in this archaeology-themed competition, this has a mash-up of different cultures, with a Sherpa guiding us into an Egypt-like crypt that includes Meso-American iconography.

It uses what seems to be a custom system used once before by this author (MAD Candy Interactive Fiction Studio). It has several good features (visually nice-looking, can save etc.) but could use some more strong features (like being able to easily repeat commands).

The game centers around the same puzzles 4 or so times in a row with slight variations each time. I was surprised that the difficulty didn't increase and that there wasn't as much variety. There was a hard puzzle for me, but that's because I didn't examine all scenery and had trouble with the parser.

I did have some struggle with the parser, especially with things like the piano keys (the F key, for instance, can't be called F or Key or F Key but has to be called F Bone).

Overall, I feel pretty neutral about the game. There's a consistent plot but not a strong plot arc; there's helpful parser features but some basic parser elements that are weak; there are interesting puzzles but most are rendered moot by using the same elements over and over. So, pretty much neutral.