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Reputedly the largest z-code (Inform format) IF title ever made, this is a very ambitious game that will challenge even the most hardened experts and will take anyone months to solve. The initial premise is familiar - explore your grandfather's museum so that you can get your legacy - but it gives rise to a highly convoluted story. Part of the reason that it's huge is that it's full of puzzles--this is, in every way, a puzzle-fest. Moreover, a lot of the puzzles are quite difficult, sufficiently so that you shouldn't expect this to take less than several weeks (unless you have a telepathic connection to the author or are relying heavily on a walkthrough). The length and complexity of the game adds to the difficulty, in fact, since you may be required to connect one puzzle with an earlier event that you might have encountered several weeks before, or with an object that you haven't touched in a month. Similarly, you accumulate quite a few objects by the end of the game, meaning that (a) it's easy to lose track of some in the shuffle and (b) it's easy to overlook the connection between the latest puzzle and one of the objects in your archive. While it is at heart more puzzlefest than story, it does a better-than-average job of integrating its puzzles with its plot and of making the latter more than a token effort, and arguably it's notable simply for those accomplishments. If you're not a fan of puzzlefests, you may not get much out of this, but it's a well-put-together game nonetheless. In short, if you love challenging puzzles and games with epic scope, it's a must-have. It may not draw you in as much as Curses!, but the writing and puzzles are both strong enough to keep you occupied for a long, long time, and there are more than a few surprises along the way – including some very nice ASCII graphics. |
