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Interesting concept, needs more tweaks, April 26, 2020

As of the moment I write this review, IFDB and the game's website says that there's a critical bug in Release 1 (regarding an apple) that, as far as I can see, makes that puzzle unsolvable (unless you read the bug warning, I suppose). It seems like that would justify a subsequent release, but, uh, I guess it's not forthcoming?

A number of the puzzles didn't feel very fair to me.

(Spoiler - click to show)
• You have to "set" the minute hand and the hour hand. Turning them, pushing them, or doing anything to the dial does nothing useful.
• You have to clean the muddy wall with a rag. Fine, but everything's covered in mud/water in that room, and the rag describes a spaceship, indicating that the rag is meant to be used in a sci-fi setting, which this isn't.
• The Cragne Manor room might be my least favorite room from Cragne Manor, because its parser is so horribly picky. You have to "fill" the urn or "bail" the grave, but the parser errors if you "get" the water. And when you get to the bottom, "something pokes through the mud here" but the parser errors if you try to examine the something or get it. You have to "dig", and you can't just "dig", oh no, you have to "dig WEST". Why??
• Apparently fish eat popcorn? And when they do, they go away??


I could never have finished the game without peeking at the source code available on the game's website. I think a few of these fixes (including that critical bug fix, eh?) would make this game a lot more accessible.

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David Welbourn, April 30, 2020 - Reply
I do plan on a subsequent release, but I just couldn't work on it right away. Also, the pickiness of the puzzles is inherited. Your criticisms are valid, but for the most part, that's how they the puzzles were in the original games.
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