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Best Lovecraft Adaptation, in all mediums, August 25, 2010by Xervosh (San Jose, Northern California) Better than any of the movies, is what I mean to say.
This truly is a fantastic and exceedingly well-written piece of IF. Its so damn good, it makes me want to write my own, to see if I can come up with something comparable. A few of the "puzzles"/moves-you-have-to-make are a bit unintuitive, you might say, and I, personally, never would have solved this thing without a walk-thru (although I did solve a LOT of the puzzles myself). It was very immersive & evocative, and I got a lot of enjoyment out of playing it. I've been a Lovecraft fan and an IF fan for almost 30 years (I first read Lovecraft in 1981, and first began playing IF in '82), and this game was far superior to The Lurking Horror (which is also good, of course). If you also grew up with Lovecraft and Infocom, I can scarcely recommend this game enough!
One minor quibble; a couple of times I did the right thing, but I used the wrong verb, and so it didn't work, and yet I received no feedback to make me think I had merely chosen the wrong verb. In one instance this was particularly maddening, in that the author seemed to be quite obviously trying to fool me into thinking I had done something correctly ...which resulted in, well, about as bad a thing as could possibly occur, and my needing to check the walk-thru again, and then out of sheer desperation, trying a different verb...and getting a different result! Aaarrgghhhh! (Spoiler - click to show)Oddly both problems involved the fish oil; I said to "rub" the fish oil on the mirror, and it polished it to a high sheen, thus facilitating Armageddon, as opposed to merely putting the oil on the mirror, which resulted in a smear, and thus saved Humanity. Also, I tried to "pour" the fish oil on the hinge, and was chided for making a mess. Again, you must merely "put" the fish oil on the hinge in order to lubricate it.
Additionally, its very important for you to know a particular verb, that is basically a synonym for another term you will use throughout the game...but you get a different result when you use the quasi-synonym. (Spoiler - click to show)You must "search" several items, not merely "examine (or "x") them.