And Yet it Moves

We start the game as an assistant to Galileo. You must smuggle his latest work out of the country and get it printed.

There’s a germ of a good idea here. At first, the puzzles are simple but fun. Nonetheless, there were some initial implementation difficulties. (Spoiler - click to show)After distracting Galileo’s jailer, why won’t Galileo tell me where his book is hidden?

This points to a problem I had: people don’t act realistically. I expected one character to betray me, or throw me out, or blackmail me. Instead he complies without hesitation. People let me wander around their property alone, to find clues. Galileo is oddly silent when he could help. And so on.

The implementation is mixed and sometimes I found it frustrating. Characters only have one or two key topics and anything else is met with silence. The author clearly has some good ideas, and I hope in the future he develops his Inform skills to improve his NPCs.

There are many points where the author has left in capital letters (or left them out), or people are given the wrong articles – the monk is initially described something like: ‘you can see Monk here’. And I wondered if that was his name, or if he was a monk.

The writing is pretty good, and the fact that I kept playing is testament to this.

There are a few difficulties with puzzle implementation. It's possible to accidentally stumble on a key location rather than following the clues. The last puzzle relies on you performing an action at a precise moment. If you do not, there’s no way to win — even though doing it one turn later should not prevent winning.

There’s also anachronisms like ‘a coffee table’ – really, at this time in Europe? There deffo were others but I don’t feel like replaying the game.

I solved it in about 15 minutes and reached the end.

It’s playable and complete, but the implementation is not all there. I hope the writer continues in IF as the concept and the early stages were engaging.