Every person seems to have a game that first got them into games, a game that they played as a child that still seems magic after so many years. Well this is mine. I used to play it with my dad when I was young and I never understood how he was smart enough to get some of the puzzles in this game. Still don’t.
First of all this is an extremely simple premise for a game but it is surprisingly challenging. It is basically a text described game with graphics to augment the scenery or help your imagination if you’re lacking in it.
The player must respond to the text given in the scenarios using only their wits and a swag bag full of goodies. Its genius and also a long enough game to keep your brain working for quite some time.
This is a sequel to the landmark game ‘the pawn’ which was of the same basic genre. The objective of the game is essentially to rob the castle of Kerovnia and all the surrounding areas of pretty much everything. To do so, you must collect certain items in a certain order and use them to your advantage. The sheer number of items and actions which it is possible to execute mean that the game just cannot simply be guessed through like most puzzle
games of this type. The fact that the items must be collected in a certain order is a bit of a pain, though.
The main downsides of this game are, firstly, that the text based nature of the game means that only certain replies that the player can give will actually do anything because the game works on the idea that it will receive explicitly worded replies, and wording a request wrong could ruin a game almost completely, for example the command ‘open bag’ applies to both the swag bag that the character starts off with and any other bags that you find during the course of the game. Needless to say, this is confusing.
Also this game is almost impossibly difficult, only a fool would attempt to play it without a piece of paper and a pen, as it is essential to write down almost every move you make to ensure that you don’t have to backtrack. The puzzles in the game can sometimes not even be identified as puzzles but once you get the hang of it this game becomes something that can give hours upon hours of intriguing gameplay.
