Ritus Sacri

Crazily original concept. "Translate" a Latin text into English, using a dictionary and a grasp of the grammatical structure (verb endings and how they match with nouns). LOOK UP words you don't know, MATCH word A WITH word B to make sensible sentences out of them. Don't worry, non-Latinophones, there is hand-holding as you go. It's an entry in EctoComp, the spooky Halloween competition, so no surprises that there might be great danger lurking in the words. Would love to see this mechanic integrated into a larger game. In it's current form, it's slight, but works well as a quick trick-or-treat bite-size candy.

A meticulously crafted parser IF, Ritus Sacti starts off innocently enough with a school task of translating a Latin passage into English. This is as far as puzzles go in this game, and for me, someone who is interested in languages and knows next to nothing about Latin, it was actually a fun and interesting exercise. I have been wondering, as a matter of fact, whether Latin is the most evil sounding language to modern ears. The author may agree. Here, Latin is used to great effect and builds up the horror slowly, slowly. The writing is excellent throughout and may even offer up a surprise or two.

This is a charming short parser game in which you read a text in Latin in your room at night, translating each line as you go (provided with a dictionary and grammar that you can LOOK UP things in). You must frequently match adjectives with nouns that share their declension, so for language fans this is heaven.

The atmosphere in the game was quite nice as well.

+Polish: This kind of thing is pretty tricky to program; I'm impressed!
+Descriptiveness: The Latin itself provides most of the flavor
+Interactivity: As a language fan, it's great.
-Emotional impact: It was fun, but I didn't get creeped out as much as I might have.
+Would I play again? I think I definitely will come back to this at some point for fun.

The core mechanic of this game is a latin translation mechanic. Once you get the hang of it, you can perform it by rote.

But (Spoiler - click to show)the game has a fitting twist ending for an Ectocomp game that makes the whole thing delightful. Surprising, but inevitable in hindsight.