Reviews by Rovarsson
History
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Watch out what you wish for., May 15, 2021An oath sworn in anger and grief leaves two men immortal, bound in their fate until one succeeds in killing the other.
One of them is Kasil, a merciless warlord who led his men on gruesome slaughter-rallies through England in the early fourteenth century. The other is you. You saw your village butchered at the hands of Kasil's men and your sister raped and murdered by the man himself. At the end of an undecided duel, you swear that you will either kill him, or die by his hand while trying. And so the curse takes hold...
First, let's get this out of the way: Yes, this setup is very reminiscent of the <Highlander-movies. It's too good a story to dismiss it as derivative or even plagiarizing though. I categorize it as "an original story in the Highlander-universe", even though the particulars of the spell/curse are somewhat different.
I was very impressed with the structure of this story. Augustine begins with an action-packed prologue where the player learns the backstory of both characters and their bond of fate.
The contrast with the start of the story proper, where you are a bored office clerk in the city of Augustine could not have been greater. Looking for a way to spend the evening, you buy a ticket for a ghost-story tour. It's during these stories that the player learns that the PC is indeed the same centuries-old warrior from the prologue. Although it could be a bit more refined, the author still makes good use of the PC knowing more than the player.
Through flashbacks brought on by the different stories, the player gradually traverses important events of the protagonist's life, coming to know and understand him better. Eventually, this leads us to the expected final showdown at the end of a second and rather more eventful story-tour.
An enthralling story to be sure, but very flawed in execution I am sad to say. When going over my notes for this review, I was reminded of my comments on Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter. A great adventure story, but not an adventure game. Apart from some fightscenes where you can THRUST and PARRY, there is hardly any exploring and no puzzle-solving whatsoever. Exploring the story would count as adventuring for me, were it not that the game is so railroaded that there might as well have been a next page-link at the bottom of the paragraph instead of a parser-prompt.
Indeed, I would have enjoyed this story more as an ink-and-paper macabre horror fiction piece as were popular in the second half of the eightteenth century.
Add to this a very annoying lack of synonyms (>THRUST AT KALIS. You would have to unsheath your sword before you do that. >UNSHEATH SWORD. I do not know the verb "unsheath". Aaargh!) and an all too generous sprinkling of misspellings.
Summary: very good story, badly executed as interactive fiction. Read it, but don't expect to play it.
Medieval murder mystery., March 1, 2021Murder most foul! Archie Elliot has been slain, his throat cut in the night. The Warden, the highest authority of law in these parts is called to snuff out the guilty party and apprehend the murderer. He asks you, his clerk and youngest son to do the sniffing.
Members of all the clans involved are gathered in the great hall of the castle. You must ask the right questions to the right people to find out who did the deed and tell your father about it.
During the interrogation section of the game, you can ask each person about several keywords, notably the four clans of the region. From their responses you are able to gather clues as to who is holding something back, who might have a motive and what that motive might be.
This process quickly became a bit mechanical to me. I imagined my character to be a quite young, somewhat timid man, kept under father's thumb while my older brothers are free to build their own life. It was hard to get in charachter though, as I could not greet people, nor could I offer my condolences to the widow and daughter. I had no choice but to barge in with the limited set of questions I had. The fact that "Archie", "murder" and "body" are treated as synonyms was a disappointment, as these topics could elicit very different responses in my imagination. (The living person Archie, the circumstances of the murder and specifics about the wounds respectively.)
However, I found it more engaging as I played on and I got to see the discrepancies between different people's answers and I began to form a hypotheses. A hypotheses that was confirmed by a clue I got about halfway through the game.
After a set number of moves, you are forced to make a decision (or make a wild guess) as to who the murderer was. Depending on your answer, the loose threads are nicely taken care of in an ending of a few paragraphs. (I got a "good" ending. I didn't replay to get a "bad" one.)
I enjoyed this game as a quick diversion, but I enjoyed it even more as a springboard to dive into the history of the feuding clans along the Anglo-Scottish border in the 13th-16th century.
This game provides a good illustration of something I find immensely interesting in human culture and behaviour: the fact that among these antagonistic, often warring clans, there was still a law (Border or March Law) that they mostly respected. (Apparently, if you were raided, it was within your legal right to raid the other party within a period of a few days. But only if you made a lot of noise and were carrying a turf-torch to announce yourself as legal raiders, instead of the sneaky illegal kind...)
Border Reivers could be expanded to make the interrogations more diverse, and maybe to include a bit more clue-finding in the castle. As it is, it's a fun and interesting experience. It got me interested in its subject matter, that's for sure.
Mmmhh, honeyed locusts., February 3, 2021Cana According To Micah is a very nice retelling of one of Jesus' miracles from the viewpoint of a servant at the wedding in Cana.
In search of the last jug of wine that has gone missing, you encounter several characters from Jesus' time and entourage, trying to get their help in understanding where the wine has gone. The puzzles almost all consist of talking to the right people at the right time.
I found the fact that there is no real theological depth to the conversations refreshing. After all, you're a servant trying to solve a practical problem. Discussions about the deeper meaning of the dis- and re-appearance of the wine are for scolars in later centuries.
I really liked the setting. In spite of a really small map, I got the impression of a spacious house with a large number of wedding guests. There were some hints to the Jewish wedding customs at the time, but as you play a character from that time, most are only mentioned in passing.
After accomplishing one important task, a quote from the poet Coleridge pops up. Not only did this take me out of the time of the story, it also hid the game-text right after my last command. Annoying.
There are a few decision points where the story can branch. I did not replay to look at them as I was content with the one playthrough and the ending I got.
Nice historical/religious vignette.
Holy Relics!, November 11, 2020Wow! That was really really really cool!
The year is 1347 AD. You, a renowned scholar and theologian, have been summoned by King and Pope. There has been a tragic fire in the library of the great abbey at Montglane. The fleeing monks have rescued as much of the treasures as they could, but the location of certain ancient relics has been forgotten through the centuries. You are to retrieve them for the greater glory of King and Church.
The Abbey of Montglane is a 1988 DOS text-adventure. It is by far the oldest IF I have finished. (Edit: I see that the date on the IFDB page is 1993. I could have sworn I saw 1988 somewhere.)
Because of the limited implementation of objects and scenery, I had to switch my adventuring style from obsessively examining everything named in the descriptions to a more general exploring of the game-space. On my first evening, I spent more than two hours drawing a map of the abbey, and I hadn't even found the passage into the catacombs by then.
This game is awe-inspiring in its handling of space. The map is very large, and a huge chunk of it is open to exploration from the get-go. However, it is structured according to the layout of a historical abbey, a large rectangle contained within the outer walls. Most of the locations are next to one of the main paths, with enough of them to the side or in between to break the symmetry and give the map a more natural feel.
A medieval abbey was for the most part a self-sustaining entity, so the locations are very diverse. Next to the church and the monk's dormitories, there is a herb and vegetable garden, a bakery, a pigsty (with barrels for collecting the blood of a butchered pig!), a meditative fountain grove,... An impressive bell-tower looks out over it all.
The orderly structure of this above-ground map contrasts with the nooks and crannies and twisty passages of the underground catacombs. (No maze.) Mapping fun guaranteed!
The intro I have summarized above promises good writing, and the game delivers... for the most part. The descriptions are sparse, efficient and more verbose when needed. But: the juvenile 1980s text-adventure humour that pops up here and there broke the atmosphere enough for me to take away a star from my rating.
Solving the puzzles is mostly a matter of exploring thoroughly, taking the (surprisingly few) objects you find with you and remembering written clues until you need them. The best puzzle of the game is wildly unfair to modern standards, but it works and it is great and funny. Well worth solving without cheating.. (Spoiler - click to show)Learn by dying... A lot.
The Abbey of Montglane is a tremendous work of interactive fiction.
Highly recommended.
(mostly) Logical Magic, October 11, 2020I had been putting of playing Savoir Faire because it is a) an old school puzzle hunt which b) depends on magic. Two things I do not particularly enjoy when playing IF.
However, after succesfully completing the puzzly Theatre with very few hints, I decided to take on Emily Short's challenge. It was great!
The reason I dislike most magic is that it feels superficial. A bunch of floaty blabla about "words of power" that somehow control the essence of things doesn't appeal to me.
In Savoir Faire, most of the puzzles depend on the Lavori d'Aracne, a magic system that lets the practitioner LINK objects. That way there is at least a hint of a physical connection between the objects and the practitioner of magic. These links also depend on a material likeness of the objects, so the magic system feels more like the use of an extra property of nature than a violation of it.
At the start of the game, your PC is almost too obnoxious to even be an anti-hero. Coming to the house you grew up in to ask for money to help with gambling debts, finding that your adoptive father and sister are not there while you expected them to be, and then going on to loot the place? Not very nice, to put it mildly. Through the snippets of backstory you find through memory and exploration though, he is somewhat redeemed (somewhat, that is.)
The setting, the mansion of the count who took in the PC, makes quite an impression through the near-perfect prose of Emily Short. Descriptions are terse, only the bare necessities there, with an ever so delicate sprinkling of detail. Examining further however opens up layers of feeling and meaning about the rooms and furniture, so that the player is drawn into this world. Extremely well done!
Because of the use of magic, I tagged this game "fantasy", but it's actually more an alternate history, where the old France is precisely the same as it was, with the addition of this extra set of natural laws, i.e. the Lavori d'Aracne.
Hard puzzles, but all of them logical; many alternative solutions (except one I found so obvious that I was disappointed not to have it work: (Spoiler - click to show)To uncork a bottle you link the cork to your sword and then draw the sword. To my mind it made much more sense within the magic system to put the sponge in the drain, then link the cork to the sponge and pull out the sponge.)
And even when you're stuck you can relax while playing with the mechanical cooking contraption (which is very reminiscent of the contraptions in Metamorphoses)
Great game!
Historical scenes from a treasure hunt., September 17, 2020Well, this was a very short but very welcome historical experience.
Each scene puts you in a different situation as the servant of mathematician/alchemist Napier. You are his hands and eyes in this easy treasure quest.
The scenes are very well written, letting you feel the atmosphere of the castle, the cave,... The NPCs have distinct characters, adding to the immersion in the story.
All in all, more a series of historical impressions than a full-fledged game, but very enjoyable.
Great side-effect of this game: it sent me on my own treasure hunt to find out more about this John Napier, an intruiging personality in the history of mathematics.
Good Gladiator story, but too short., December 4, 2019I'm rather new at Choice-games, but this one, with its ancient Rome theme appealed to me.
I very much liked the customizing of my character at the beginning. You can choose male or female, which doesn't seem to have any effect on further gameplay. The way you assign further strengths and talents was very rewarding to me. You get stat-points based on your choice of family background, and on the choice of the mythological character you're named after. (Diana, goddes of woods, wildlife and hunting, gives you a headstart in Stealth, for example.)
It's well written, apart from a typo here and there. It's also well structured. A coherent story of development as a fledgling gladiator, with attention to development of fighting skills (of course) but also of various personal relations. Do you choose sibling loyalty above a strong training ally? Do you choose friendship above a good rapport with your trainer or master?
These decisions play a clear role in how well you fare in your first battle in the arena. Just before and during that fight, you also make difficult but influential decisions (weapons choice, tactics, who you help and who you leave to fend for themselves). Deep involvement with your character here.
And then it's over...
This game feels like a very good introductory chapter to a longer, fully fleshed out novella about the life of a roman gladiator/slave. Will she earn or buy her freedom? Will he become trainer of gladiators that follow? Will she escape with her brother and confront their father? How about his friends, enemies, allies, trainers?
I, for one, would very much welcome a continuation.
I felt hungry for more.
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