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Blorb: Winter Break at Hogwarts.​gblorb
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Winter Break at Hogwarts

by Brian Davies

2019

Web Site

(based on 8 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

Spend a Christmas holiday alone in the world's most famous wizarding school...

What was supposed to be a couple of weeks of peace and quiet while the other students were home with their families gets disrupted, first by a lost wand, and then a lost housemate. It's up to you to unravel the mystery, learn some new magic, and save your housemate and yourself!


Game Details

Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: October 1, 2019
Current Version: 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 7
IFID: 0DD3C704-7240-40AB-934A-525FBF5AFC7E
TUID: p3ll441r7a5r12yh

Awards

41st Place - 25th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2019)

Editorial Reviews

Comfort Castle
Full two hours used, nowhere near finishing game
See the full review

IFComprehensive

Because the IFComp is a small competition for independent developers making non-commerical games, it’s an ideal venue for games based off other works. While fanfiction is not a genre I’m particularly interested in, I nevertheless found “Winter Break at Hogwarts” to be an appealing puzzlefest set in the Harry Potter universe.
See the full review

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Member Reviews

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4 star:
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3 star:
(4)
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(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 2
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
A polished and massive recreation of Hogwarts in Inform., October 18, 2019
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 2-10 hours

This game lovingly recreates Hogwarts, with dozens or possibly hundreds of rooms, down to sub-corridors.

In this huge world, everything Hogwarts has in the holidays is implemented: Hagrid's hut, the owlery, Dumbledore's office, all of the classrooms, the dungeon, Filch's office, Hogsmeade, etc.

In this vast and sometimes overwhelming maze (for which lavishly illustrated maps are available), there is a mystery afoot. After a longish introduction where you explore and look for your wand, you discover a missing student and a professor with a cloud over his head.

This works, but its exceptionally long, and this makes the usual adventuring process diluted. The lack of regular gameplay can be ameliorated by the wonder of exploring a Potter world, but this will vary a lot from player to player.

I played for 2 hours and decompiled to read the ending. It seems exciting in parts, but the great spread-out-ness and the difficulty in finding clues made me bounce off emotionally.


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Map Too Big, Story Too Small, October 7, 2021

I do love this story as a Hogwarts Walking Sim, I really do. The amount of effort and detail put into mapping the world is phenomenal. However, this is the second time I've tried to play this, and find myself continually frustrated at going nowhere fast. Cues are less than straightforward, and by the time you've located an item or a secret, finding your way back when it becomes relevant is a major chore. I'll set this one aside again, and maybe pick it back up in the future, but the grindy feeling of just simple movement is really turning me off of this one.


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Games with exploration (or even just games w/ secret passages and such) by Cygnus
There seems to be a LOT of games where you just.. explore hidden secrets in mansions, or similar. some of them have a plot, some of 'em don't, but i'm lookin' for stuff like D'Arkun, the Manor at Whitby.. Or any games with just...




This is version 7 of this page, edited by Zape on 4 May 2021 at 10:00pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item