Heroine's Mantle

Baf's Guide

Massive, and massively ambitious, this game combines a sweeping and complex plot with some of the most fiendish puzzles in existence. You are a young woman swept into the role of superheroine, and the game provides enough hair-raising adventures to fill a half-dozen lesser works of IF. There are many, many locations, NPCs, and scenarios; action scenes worthy of a John Woo movie; and utterly ludicrous challenges to overcome.

Speaking of ludicrous, the puzzle design needs quite a lot of work. The superheroine has certain powers, which are rather fun, and which the game allows the player to learn in a fairly effective manner. Not all of the puzzles turn on these powers, however, and others don't use them in obvious ways; there are many, many places where the game requires syntax that might not be obvious and that is non-standard to IF. Likewise, some puzzles are only solvable by a complex sequence of read-the-author's-mind maneuvers.

Finally, some people may have mixed reactions to the game's treatment of gender -- the overt feminist propaganda sits a bit oddly next to a sometimes voyeuristic treatment of individual women.

In other words, this is a game with higher highs and lower lows than most; where it's good, it's great, and where it's bad, it's terrible. On the whole it comes out worth playing -- set aside a few weeks for the task, because it is not a small game -- but have the solution handy. Some of these puzzles are just not going to make sense any other way.

-- Emily Short