Forbidden Lore - Alex Crossley
It takes a while to get the hang of this game. One of the reasons is that our goal is obscure till quite late in the game. This review is going to be more spoilery than most as it’s difficult to discuss it without revealing the primary gameplay elements, which are themselves the whole of the puzzle more or less.
Our grandfather’s left us his old library. We need to sort it out. As it turns out though, we eventually discover that in order to save the world from an impending apocalypse, we need to, for some reason…well, we’re not quite sure what we need to do. Get more powerful and probably use that power to do something that’s almost but not quite entirely unrevealed by the text. This isn’t a moan by the way - I quite liked the uncertainty. Certainly made things interesting.
Effectively, in order to do this, whatever this is, we have a pretty extensive library at our disposal. We can learn and perform magic. We can get powerful. We can protect ourselves from unspecified dreadful fates. There are many books here all of which, when their instructions are followed, give us more power, or give us somewhere new to visit. I, actually, really enjoyed this aspect of the game. Poking around the many bookcases and finding all the secrets in the room, working out what to do with the info they revealed was a really cool mechanic.
The game is also nicely written. There’s some good descriptive work and, at points it’s imaginative and almost surreal.
But. There are many frustrations here. I had to turn to the walkthru several times. I would class many of the puzzles as very much of the read the author’s mind variety. There’s a few in particular. Picking out the words ‘moon’ and ‘rug’ in relatively innocuous bits of flavor text. Knowing that the bust can speak. Suddenly developing the ability to shoot fire without actually being told that. And there’s more and these are gateway puzzles.
Toward the end, it all falls apart a bit. The endgame was done completely from the walkthrough.
Probably the most annoying moment of all was, at the end, when I realised that the three things you found in the desk were of no use at all! I didn’t even need to open the desk to complete the game. Author, you have no idea how much time I spent trying fruitlessly to do stuff with those things. All to no avail! Were they total red herrings or did I just miss a cool thing to do with them?
I did really like the core mechanic though.