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The Blurb Says It All, December 6, 2020I cannot summarize Sage Sanctum Scramble any better than its blurb has already done: as promised, it’s a grab bag of puzzles. Most of them have to do with wordplay and/or rearranging letters in some way.
The quality of the puzzles is excellent. Professional-quality. Enthusiasts would pay money for them, without a doubt. And they’re implemented extremely solidly, with the parser responding smoothly to almost everything I tried - that’s quite an achievement given the complexity of some of these puzzles, and the variety of different inputs involved. In many cases, the game even recognizes inputs that are barking up the right tree, dispensing hints or encouragement to help the player reach the finish line.
But make no mistake: while this game is easy to pick up and play, it’s quite challenging to master. The puzzles range from easyish to total brain-busters, and everything in between. Winning the game only requires a portion of the puzzles to be completed, so it’s not terribly hard. But if you’re in it to achieve a perfect score, that’s another matter entirely, and will likely require a major time investment. For reference: I think it took me about 5 hours of gameplay before I decided to finish up with a dubious score of 37. But I don’t have a lot of experience with these types of puzzles. Your mileage will vary.
This piece is 98% interactive, 2% fiction, with only the barest threads of narrative tying the puzzles together. Is that a drawback? Or would a more substantive story be a mere frivolity here? I suppose you’ll have to answer that question for yourself. But for me - yeah, it's a considerable drawback.
Overall, if you want a bunch of clever word puzzles without any frills or pretensions, Sage Sanctum Scramble has you covered.