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Blorb-file for Fabularium (Android) or ADRIFT 5 (Windows).
Requires an ADRIFT version 5 interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
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Stone of Wisdom

by Kenneth Pedersen profile

Episode 3 of The Bash Saga
Fantasy
2018

Web Site

(based on 4 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

Once again queen Drana has a task for you. Can you obtain the Stone of Wisdom and will you ever be free?

Play as the warrior Bash on your quest to obtain the Stone of Wisdom. You will start out equipped with a magical combat ring, a lamp and a backpack filled with food rations. And of course, you have your trusty sword. But use it wisely. After all good karma is the path to success...

Play online or:
Windows: Requires ADRIFT 5
Android: Requires Fabularium


Game Details


Awards

44th Place - 24th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2018)


News

It was necessary to modify this game to make it playable online. This has now been done: Play Stone of Wisdom online here

The two previous episodes of the Bash Saga are also playable online:
Dragon Diamond (episode 1 - Inform version): IFDB-page with link to online play
The Way Home (episode 2 - ADRIFT): IFDB-page with link to online play
Reported by Denk | History | Edit | Delete
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Editorial Reviews

The Breakfast Review
We're a slave tasked with retrieving an artifact, the Stone of Wisdom, for our queen, who has promised to give us our freedom in exchange for this one final labour. What follows is a fairly standard MacGuffin quest with trolls, caves, and dwarves. The puzzles aren't too terribly difficult, and the coding seems pretty solid. There's a certain charm to the whole thing too, I think.
See the full review

The Good Old Days
+ Nice and clear cut scenario
+ As classic as the story gets at times the puzzles are original
+ You can actually lose the game and the game has the decency to tell you
+/- Rather on the easy side and somewhat linear
- Relatively many empty rooms
- Even for a fantasy scenario slightly unrealistic, eg.: Enemies living only a couple of 'rooms' apart, getting the stone so easily
= A good old treasure hunt
See the full review

IFComprehensive
The setting is largely generic, with the game starting in a troll-infested cave and later expanding to towns of small furry creatures and dwarves. Still, the game makes an effort to avoid hack-and-slash fantasy gameplay, and some of the puzzles involve helping characters the player runs across. The game is well-paced; it’s larger than it initially appears, and the environment is open without making it unclear how to proceed in the game.
See the full review

McT's Interactive Fiction Reviews
Overall, I’m quite enjoying this game. It doesn’t do anything special with the genre. It’s just…..a …..well…..a….text adventure. The puzzles are quite nice. It feels nicely written.
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These Heterogenous Tasks
This is a very straightforward fantasy cave-crawl. It flows fairly well – the initial sequence, in particular, moves forwards smoothly and naturally – but, like, IF has had 45 years of generic fantasy cave-crawls, and this isn’t doing a whole lot to stand out.
See the full review

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Member Reviews

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Number of Reviews: 2
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
An old-school (in a good way) compact ADRIFT game, February 2, 2019
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

I beta-tested this game. This is the best ADRIFT game I've seen in a while. It feels like a nice little slice taken from a Zork-like universe, with lamps and stone dungeons and a troll and little people and so on. There's conversation, treasure, and a satisfying map.

A lot of time Adrift games seem to be trying to get you to do something specific but won't let you actually do it without struggling for the right command. Thankfully, that didn't happen here!

It's like a nice-sized slice of old-fashioned game, not too hard, not too easy. Worth downloading ADRIFT for.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Well-implemented old-school text adventure, December 21, 2018

Stone of Wisdom starts off like a fairly standard old-school text adventure. You're given a quest to find a magic item (the titular stone), as well as three objects to help you along the way. There isn't much motivation provided for why you need to find the item, although the queen does promise you your freedom if you bring it back. But why is she asking you? Well, it appears you've done her a favor before, but the game doesn't go into the details. Presumably this backstory is contained in the two earlier games in the Bash series (which I have not played).

Even not knowing the background, though, the beginning isn't that much different from a lot of the quest-driven text adventures from the 1980s. Or, frankly, from a lot of classic fairy tales. And in both fairy tales and old-school text adventures, it's generally the journey that matters most, not the beginning or motivation (or even, sometimes, the end).

Stone of Wisdom contains several amenities that feel modern and not the kind of thing you would have seen in a 1980s-era text adventure, though. Perhaps these are naturally a part of the ADRIFT language; I couldn't tell. (This was my first ADRIFT game.) But I appreciated the automap - especially the ability to travel long distances across the map just by clicking the location that was my destination. Also, the auto-complete feature was occasionally annoying but mostly helpful. I never had the inclination to turn it off, although that was an option.

So, in general, this is an old-school text adventure with a more modern interface. The puzzles felt mostly straightforward and of the old-school variety, too, although a few of them were more involved and thus a bit stronger. Regardless, I did not need the walkthrough. The game is also quite gentle with you: It warns you before you're about to put yourself in an unwinnable state. It also guides you in some places with the puzzles. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)if you try to attack the troll with the sword the game suggests using the magic ring instead.

Overall, I found Stone of Wisdom to be a well-implemented old-school text adventure with a classic plot and setting and some modern features to ease gameplay. I enjoyed it.

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This is version 10 of this page, edited by Denk on 12 March 2023 at 7:29pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page