External Links


aayela.gam
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
aayela.gam
as entered in 1996 competition
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
aayelasrc.zip
(Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
walkthru.txt
solution
readme
a brief note about the game
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Aayela

by Magnus Olsson

Cave crawl
1996

(based on 24 ratings)
2 reviews

Game Details


Awards

Nominee, Best Writing - 1996 XYZZY Awards

10th Place - 2nd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (1996)

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


An interesting experiment in the presentation of darkness. To save your kingdom, you must find the legendary Stone of Aayela (a crystal that imprisons a powerful spirit of light) by exploring the dark cave where it lies by sense of touch and sound. A small game that exposes some of the untapped potential of the medium.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SPAG
[...] The atmosphere created by spending most of the adventure in the dark is moderately effective, but the use of other senses is too limited to do the situation justice. [...] (John Wood)

[...] I liked "Aayela," don't get me wrong. I simply didn't find it as clever as Magnus' previous work, particularly when compared with so many other outstanding entries this year. (C.E. Forman)
See the full review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

My main memory of Aayela was that crawling in dark is an interesting device which could make for an intense episode in a longer game (and, in fact, already has in the case of So Far.) As the bulk of this game, it made for an interesting experiment.
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(0)
4 star:
(10)
3 star:
(10)
2 star:
(4)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 2
Write a review


9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Song of light and darkness -- or rather, three notes, September 11, 2010
by Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands)

In Aayela, you play a young and expendable knight off to find the magical stone that will cure the queen's illness. This story is mostly an excuse to get you into a cave, where the game's main gimmick quickly becomes apparent: your lamp goes out, and most of the game is spent in darkness.

Exploring a cave in the dark could be very interesting, but Aayela fails to do its premise justice: not only is the cave exceedingly small, but there is in fact little difference between this game and a game where you explore a cave with light. You do not have to guess the identity of objects from their form, smell, taste or sound -- feeling something will always identify it for you. From the point of view of the player, typing "examine" and typing "feel" is not much of a difference. You do have to discover some things by feeling around, but these quasi-puzzles are familiar from other games where you have to feel under or in things.

What remains is an enjoyable little tale with different endings depending on a choice the character can make at the end. Olsson writes good, if perhaps somewhat overblown, prose, and the final scene is much more memorable than the cave itself. So, as a snack sized diversion, Aayela is certainly worth playing; but much more could have been done with it.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
An enjoyable short romp in the darhkness. Beautiful writing, February 3, 2016

This is a shortish game with the almost unique trick of placing a lot of gameplay in darkness in a cave. The only similar game I can think of is Hunter in Darkness or parts of So Far.

You are searching for a magical crystal in an underground cavern. The rest of the story is mainly atmosphere, and it works well. This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best writing, and deserves it.

Overall, a short, simple game, with at least 3 endings depending on your final actions.

Recommended for its fun-to-length ratio.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

If you enjoyed Aayela...

Related Games

Other members recommend this game for people who like Aayela:

Hunter, in Darkness, by Andrew Plotkin
Average member rating: (120 ratings)

Suggest a game

Recommended Lists

Aayela appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Best fantasy games by MathBrush
These are my favorite games that include some sort of magical or fantastical element. Games with mostly horror or sci-fi elements are on other lists, as are surreal games, fairy tale/nursery games, and religious/mythological games. I've...

Favorite "atmosphere" games by MathBrush
These are games that are fun because of the atmosphere and plot more than the puzzles. These games are not too hard and not too easy. They generally have a big over-arching theme. I have included most horror and comedy games in other...

Great "lunchtime length" games by MathBrush
These are games that can generally be completed in 30 minutes or less. Some can be completed much faster. Included in this list are games that have multiple endings that can individually be reached quickly. It also includes several Twiny...

See all lists mentioning this game

Polls

The following polls include votes for Aayela:

Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.

Games with Impossible-to-film moments by aaronius
I'm looking for games that demonstrate the power of text-based games. Games with sentences that would make developers of 3D games weep, like "The army of ten million robots marched over the liquid landscape," or "She concealed her anger...




This is version 9 of this page, edited by Paul O'Brian on 5 May 2022 at 1:22am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page