Aayela

In Aayela, you play a young and expendable knight off to find the magical stone that will cure the queen's illness. This story is mostly an excuse to get you into a cave, where the game's main gimmick quickly becomes apparent: your lamp goes out, and most of the game is spent in darkness.

Exploring a cave in the dark could be very interesting, but Aayela fails to do its premise justice: not only is the cave exceedingly small, but there is in fact little difference between this game and a game where you explore a cave with light. You do not have to guess the identity of objects from their form, smell, taste or sound -- feeling something will always identify it for you. From the point of view of the player, typing "examine" and typing "feel" is not much of a difference. You do have to discover some things by feeling around, but these quasi-puzzles are familiar from other games where you have to feel under or in things.

What remains is an enjoyable little tale with different endings depending on a choice the character can make at the end. Olsson writes good, if perhaps somewhat overblown, prose, and the final scene is much more memorable than the cave itself. So, as a snack sized diversion, Aayela is certainly worth playing; but much more could have been done with it.

This is a shortish game with the almost unique trick of placing a lot of gameplay in darkness in a cave. The only similar game I can think of is Hunter in Darkness or parts of So Far.

You are searching for a magical crystal in an underground cavern. The rest of the story is mainly atmosphere, and it works well. This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best writing, and deserves it.

Overall, a short, simple game, with at least 3 endings depending on your final actions.

Recommended for its fun-to-length ratio.