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Story file
Contains FollowingAStar.blb
Release 2, post-comp version
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Story File (release 1)
Original competition release
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

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The Bible Retold: Following a Star

by Justin Morgan profile

Episode 2 of The Bible Retold
Religious
2010

(based on 13 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

You are Balthasar, a magus from Babylon. You and your companions, Gaspar and Melchior, are about to embark on a journey to Judea, a client kingdom of the Roman Empire, to venerate a newborn king. You'll need to bring gifts.


Game Details


Awards

13th Place - 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2010)

Nominee, Best Individual NPC; Nominee, Best Individual PC - 2010 XYZZY Awards

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Member Reviews

5 star:
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Number of Reviews: 2
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Pomegranate jam, for heaven's sake..., June 20, 2022
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Slice of Life

After much consulting of the prophecies and calculating the trajectory of the new, bright star in the heavens, it is confirmed. The foretold King of Jews is born! You must travel west to the land of Judea to lay precious gifts at his feet.

The first part of Following A Star is a puzzleless preparation of the journey ahead and an introduction of the main characters.

Melchior is the wise and knowledgeable one, the natural leader.
Gaspar is a boisterous and forward military man.
That leaves you, Balthasar, as... Well, especially in the first part you're mainly there for comic relief while you try to get on your camel only to fall off again three commands later. No worries, you get to show your true potential in later parts where you are given the responsability of obtaining suitable gifts for the prophecied child.

Melchior, Gaspar and a large number of other NPCs are deeply characterized. Even in the short descriptions and the limited conversation topics, each and every one of them has a few idiosyncratic properties and independent actions to set them apart.

The game hardly ever breaks character in its reponses. Many, many nonessential actions still get a customized reaction, often very funny. (Try walking into a wall in the presence of the camels...)

After the introduction, you arrive in a small town in Judea. This is where the game proper begins. You, Balthasar are tasked with finding three gifts to present to the child who we all know is Baby Jesus. The only necessary puzzles in this part all have to do with obtaining the gifts. These are relatively easy.
However, while looking around the town you will recognize a bunch of sidequests. Part of the motivation for completing these is that you gain points. The real motivation for any adventurer is of course that they're there. They're also more challenging and more fun than the necessary puzzles. (See if you can help the instrument vendor clean out his trumpet...)
I finished a handful of these sidequests and I still only got an endscore of 25 out of 42. Room for improvement and enticement to replay.

Having acquired the gifts, you must find your way through the desert to Jerusalem. To do so, a tricky mathematics puzzle stands in your way. Here, Following A Star is brilliant in wrapping up the puzzle in the context of the journey. You are given an astrolabe and an abacus and must deduce your position by observing the bright star. An otherwise dry calculation becomes an interesting and pressing navigational question that is justified in-game.

Less successful, I found, was a language puzzle where you have to decline the English nouns in your commands to a guard into garbled Latin. I studied Latin and Greek in high school, and the utterly unfunny pseudo-Latin phrases the game wanted me to construct drove me to just copying them from the walkthrough. (Compare constructing "Spanish" words by sticking "-os" at the endos. For realos...)

Fortunately, the finale redeemed the game brilliantly in my opinion. An ever sillier chase through the desert that reminded me of some of Monty Python's finest sketches.

Genuinely funny, some challenging puzzles, very good implementation and characterization. Recommended!

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A slapstick version of the three kings story. Many sidequests, February 3, 2016

This game is a sequel to the first Bible Retold game. In it, you play as one of the three kings as you travel west, finding gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and visiting Jesus.

The game's take on the Bible is sort of a slapstick comedy. You have to impersonate priests, steal, dupe guards, etc.

The puzzles are varied and odd, and I had some trouble with the parser sometimes, especially during an complicated math problem involving an astrolabe and latitude calculations.

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The Bible Retold: Following a Star on IFDB

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The following polls include votes for The Bible Retold: Following a Star:

Christianity in IF by strivenword
Sam Kabo Ashwell's statement in his recent review of Cana According to Micah that "the best works dealing prominently with Christian themes are written by non-Christians" made me curious. Perhaps a list of games with serious Christian...




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