Robert DeFord

This is a good, tightly written, bug-free work of IF. I am starting to associate the name Ryan Veeder with quality games, and I am thinking that I should play some of Emily's solo works, assuming she has some. (I haven't looked in the archives yet.)

 

This detective/ghost/mystery house game is a long one (by my standards anyway). You're going to have to draw a map, which, given the three dimensional nature of the setting, will be a tangled mess. But you are likely better at this sort of thing than I am, so don't avoid this game because of me.

 

Now about the puzzles, they are mostly of the rearrange objects or combine things kind. You are going to have to be a lot better at IF than I am to figure them out in a timely manner. I don't like complex puzzles. I prefer my IF to focus on narrative, with puzzels that don't slow me down to much while I'm following the story. But that's just me, and I'll wager that many IF reader/players prefer a puzzle fest. Anyway, back to the review. I had to resort to the excellent in-game walkthrough in order to solve many of the puzzles, but if you love solving puzzles, you will no doubt do a lot better than me.

 

Yes, I said excellent walkthrough. I gotta hand it to Ryan and Emily; they created just about the best walkthrough that I've ever seen. You can type walkthrough in any location and it will analyze how much progress you've made towards completing the main line through the game, what objects you are carrying, give you a choice if you are working on more than one puzzle, tell you what objects you need to get, and give you explicit commands on how to do what you need to do. I like the fact that it didn't reveal the solutions to any puzzles that you have not yet encountered. In my humble opinion, this adaptive walkthrough should set the standard for IF works, though it must have been a bear to program, and not every author would be up to the task. Even so, every author should go as far along this path as he or she is able.

 

The narrative and plot are quite good. I liked how the story sort of came together in my mind as I progressed through the game. There is plenty of good foreshadowing, so the story elements fit together gracefully without anything feeling out of place. Good job Ryan and Emily!

 

Can this game be completed in two hours? I honestly don't know, but I doubt it. There is a LOT to see, and explore, and many objects to examine. Too many objects and locations? Hard to say, With the objects, I couldn't sort the wheat from the straw so I ended up carrying a lot of objects. With the locations, I wandering around a lot, and I found traveling a little tedious. However, there is quite a bit of unobtrusive cluing, so your experience may vary from mine. Anyway, I had to use the walkthrough so much that I cannot even begin to estimate how long it would take to finish the game without it.