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Review
It's very tough to give a rating here, so I won't- especially because I beta tested.
Alyas of Starhollow goes to great lengths not just to capture the feel of traditional/cassette fantasy IF, but to get the writing style, story structure, and even puzzle design right. In this it is a wholesale success and I can't fault it. It goes right down to having to press seemingly arbitrary letters on the title screen to start the game.
I love this, but it means one ends up with many splinters from the rough edges while playing. And yet even as I write that, it seems unfair. These rough edges are lovingly carved. This is a title that expects the player to go to some trial-and-error, to experiment heavily through timed sections, to guess and explore and reload and reload and refine. There are instances of guess-the-verb and a few of guess-the-noun but nothing counterintuitive- everything always makes sense in hindsight.
The descriptive writing is appropriately austere, and I find it effective, overall.
Let me put it this way. Give this one a try - and if you make it out of the village without too much frustration, press on.
