Sub Rosa

by Joey Jones profile and Melvin Rangasamy

2015

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(22)
4 star:
(11)
3 star:
(7)
2 star:
(0)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 40
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- gattociao, September 9, 2023

- Drew Cook (Acadiana, USA), September 7, 2023

- Ms. Woods, July 25, 2023

- aluminumoxynitride, July 24, 2023

- thesleuthacademy, June 19, 2023

Onirica e surreale, November 1, 2022

Non male, intrigante l'idea di catapultarci direttamente in un mondo onirico e surreale senza spiegazioni di sorta, lasciando che la storia ci si sveli pian piano durante l'esplorazione.
Realistica ma un po' tediosa la trovata di dover rimettere ogni cosa a posto prima di andarsene: riuscire a ricordarsi tutto č pių impegnativo degli enigmi veri e propri, che in fondo sono pochi (anche se costruiti in modo logico).

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- Vulturous, May 9, 2022

- TheBoxThinker, September 7, 2021

- Hellzon (Sweden), July 1, 2021

- Chin Kee Yong (Singapore), April 28, 2021

- House on a Tree Studios, November 12, 2020

- Sammel, April 23, 2020

- mapped, January 6, 2020

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Sshh. It's a secret., December 6, 2019
by Rovarsson (Belgium)

First location: Leathery Cliff. I was hooked.

The concept of the game is intriguing: Political espionage to undermine the position of someone of high societal standing.

You break in to a marvelously described and well-implemented mansion to find evidence that the owner of said house has unacceptable secrets. Some of these secrets are hidden in plain sight, others take quite a bit of examining, searching, and doing rather improbable things.

The puzzles range from "Just X and search and you'll find something" to using inconspicuous objects to unusual ends.

Getting out of the house without compromising your own trustworthiness is as important as getting in in the first place. (And both are hard.)

Very good and rewarding game. Very replayable too, if you left some loose ends the first time (or didn't understand where the loose ends came from.)

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- Stian, February 22, 2019

- JoQsh, February 20, 2019

- Laney Berry, January 31, 2019

- mrfrobozzo, August 2, 2018

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Old-fashioned difficulty, joyfully original world, June 3, 2018

I generally have a policy of not rating or reviewing games that I haven't played to completion (and worse yet, this game famously has a big Twist Ending of which I am totally unaware), but Sub Rosa is so difficult and yet so enjoyable that I feel compelled to break my policy, so that I don't have to wait until 2050 or whatever to express my appreciation for its writing and worldbuilding.

Because those are really this game's main strengths. When I first played Sub Rosa during the 2015 comp, and got about a room and a half in, I was practically buzzing with joy at how fun, how original this game is. A couple years later, I've calmed down a little, but it's still an absolute joy. As others have mentioned, the library is a particular highlight, but really there's great stuff all over.

However, it is an old-school hard if-puzzle game. I keep losing my save files, not because of any extraordinary technical issues but just because I'm not used to sticking this long with a game that makes you save. Normally I give up on puzzle games pretty quick, but I like the writing in Sub Rosa enough to stick around.

I do wish that the walkthrough was a little bit more comfortably spaced, or that there was a more robust in-game hint system, so that I didn't have to deploy cat-like reflexes to avoid spoiling half the game when I just wanted to get unstuck from one puzzle.

Anyway, excellent game, good enough to convince me to bend my typical preferences and practices in order to stick with it. Like For A Change, this is worth playing even if you're not really an old-school IF type. I'm certainly not, and I'm enjoying it anyway.

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- calindreams (Birmingham, England), April 12, 2018

- piehole, March 23, 2018

- Sobol (Russia), January 3, 2018

- karlnp (Vancouver, BC), August 23, 2017

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
An espionage game that rewards attention to detail, July 20, 2017
by Cory Roush (Ohio)

This is one of the best - if you're a fan of espionage AND fantasy/sci-fi, you're going to love this too.

I want to see more of this setting. The REVEAL at the end (no, literally - if you achieve a perfect score, you have access to a command that describes the game's biggest twist and explains the "perfect" ending) left me speechless and also wanting more.

One of the game's biggest puzzles is simply leaving no trace that you were ever there to begin with. This sounds like it'd be a real chore, but it actually required me to be 100% engaged at all times so that I could remember how I had entered the mansion and what I had disturbed. It also allows the authors to completely avoid one of the tropes that is my biggest pet peeve with interactive fiction: you're not forced to be a pack rat... in fact, there are a lot of items that you conceivably could pick up and take with you but are prohibited from doing so because they'll leave traces that you could not clean up. So clever, and I appreciate it so much!

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- Spike, May 28, 2017


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