Ratings and Reviews by dfreas
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A (nearly) great game, June 30, 2008Rating this game was a bit frustrating for me because it could have been a five star game with just a little more work, and yet in its current state I can only justify giving it three. Before I go into why I'd like to touch on a few of the positives for this game, because I really did enjoy it and think it's worth playing.
The plot is a fairly simple one, a monk has been murdered and you have a monastery full of suspects with various motives. You have to talk to them all and search the area for clues to find out who did it, how, and why. Then at the end of the game you call a meeting and run through the whole accusation (Don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything - the game tells you all of this up front.) In the meantime you're wandering around in a fairly historically accurate monastery. The setting is nice and well described and the other monks wander around doing their daily chores in a nice almost believable sort of way. It turns out the game is even replayable since all of the relevant details are randomly generated, which is a very nice touch. The motives are believable and have a certain amount of depth to them and the game even handles your accusations realistically when you get it wrong - if your accusation is wrong but believable then people will still believe you, but if you're wrong and there's proof that you're wrong the game calls your bluff. Bravo all around.
But then there's the matter of why this game gets only three stars instead of the five it so easily could have had. Implementation! Here's an example:
>x altar
The altar is a simple stone slab over which is draped a linen cloth. There are also votive candles on the altar.
>x cloth
You can't see any such thing.
This happens over and over and over again while playing this game. Each room is very nicely described but about half the things mentioned in the game don't really exist. A good round of betatesting would have easily cleared this up. That improvement alone would have gotten a fourth star out of me.
To get the fifth star would be a little more work, but only a little. In a game largely based around NPCs the NPCs need to have a little depth. Now as long as you don't talk to the monks they are very realistic, wandering around doing their chores and going to sleep and prayers at the appropriate times. Talk to them though and the realism falls apart, the number of topics implemented is very small and the responses are repetitious in a robotic sort of way. Which is a shame, because it's obvious a lot of work went in to making these guys *act* real - I just wish they spoke a little better.
All in all worth the time to play. I'd love to see this game re-released after a good round of beta-testing.
Excellent puzzle-fest, June 28, 2008If you don't enjoy puzzles this game is definitely not for you. Luckily I do - it's what got me into IF and it's what I enjoy about most of my favorite games. I missed this game when it came out and hadn't played it until today when I heard it mentioned by someone else who happened to be playing it at the time.
A few criticisms about the game would be the immense amount of descriptive material and the rather odd inventory scheme. Normally having every detail of a world implemented is a positive thing, and for the most part that's true here too. But it is a bit overwhelming, especially since almost everything seems important. I actually had quite a bit of trouble solving one part of the game because I forgot about the description of a part (1) of an item (2) that was on another item (3) in a section (4) of the room (5) described in the room description. That's five (!!) levels of recursive detail - and it was vitally important to the game!
Now in fairness the game is only one room, so the author had to have quite a few levels of detail to achieve the puzzle depth that he did.
And then there's the inventory. Because there is so much stuff it quickly becomes obvious that carrying everything in the room would be impossible for a real person. So the author implemented a neat little feature where the PC automatically sets things down if you pick up too much. This is nice in that it avoids the player having to manually juggle inventory but it has a nasty side effect. In a puzzle based game it is often very useful to type "inventory" to get a list of all the items you have at your disposal to solve a given puzzle. The inventory handling implemented in this game makes that absolutely impossible. So if you find something early on in the game and can't figure out what to do with it, later when you need it you might find that it's buried in a drawer somewhere and you've forgotten that it even exits. Which means you'll spend quite a bit of time researching every level of detail just to be sure you haven't forgotten something important.
That's it for the bad. The good is really good though. The puzzles are fun. Each puzzle is clued quite well and none of them require any weird guess the verb nonsense or impossible leaps of intuition. It's all fairly logical and once you have the right pieces everything falls into place. For anyone who loves puzzles this is a rare bit of fun. Frustrating at times and certainly not easy, but worth the time. There isn't a whole lot of back story so it's sort of puzzles for puzzle's sake. If you don't like that then don't bother because the game doesn't have much else to offer. But if you do enjoy a good puzzle this game is a must play.
Fun stuff, June 23, 2008Aside from the occasional guess the verb this is a fun couple of hours worth of play. Not entirely implemented but given the caveat it turns out not to matter so much. Philosophically snarky which should be enough reason to play any game. Save often though, I forgot to and when I screwed up I was so annoyed at having to start over that I didn't bother, so I never actually saw the ending.
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