Anssi's IFComp 2020 Reviews

THE ELEUSINIAN MISERIES

In contrast to the previous game I reviewed above, the narrative style in this game is extremely wordy, a kind of high-brow English especially in the style of P.G. Wodehouse (of the Jeeves and Wooster fame). This style fits the setting, even if the game deals with an initiate to a secret fellowship in ancient Greece, and for having been given the chance to participate in such initiation rituals, he has to act as a kind of servant to his acquaintance who agreed to take him there, and in the beginning of the game he has to carry out some household tasks before the actual rituals begin. The language is hilarious, and for example the first-time ‘x me’ response induced a LOL moment. The location and object descriptions may be rather long, but fortunately examining them repeatedly yields shorter responses. In the beginning, the puzzles are on the easier side, in spite of the general wordiness of the game, and they get a bit more difficult as the game progresses. Sometimes the puzzles are even too easy, for example

one of the rituals that the initiate has to go through can be solved ideally just by waiting.

One puzzle involving the rituals was a bit unclear:

In the ritual, you were supposed to pray to the gods, but this was mentioned only once, and if you missed that bit, examined something else for a while and then tried to ask an NPC what the present ritual was about again, there would be no helpful response. Also the ritual itself was somewhat inadequately clued: the puzzle with this ritual was that you would be in danger of falling asleep while concentrating to pray. However, praying repeatedly just yielded the response that your eyes were almost closing, but you actually never fell asleep. The game didn’t proceed from there, however; so, it wasn’t actually enough that you didn’t fall asleep, you also had to be wide awake. This was not adequately explained, and hints were needed to proceed.

Later on in the game the puzzles get a bit harder, and fortunately the hint system is available throughout. However, in a couple of cases the hints jump from gentle nudges to the outright solution, and there is no in-between (before the outright solution was spelled out, there was a warning about it, however, so there was no big harm). A couple of cases involved guessing the verb, might have been also just me though. After the polished language of the beginning, there are also some spelling errors here and there in the middle and towards the end. These are forgivable, though, as the language used in this game is very high-standard in general. and even something like “smörgåsbord” is spelled properly with all the dots and circles. One aspect of the humor of the game indeed is that even if it is set in ancient Greece, various terms originating in more modern times are used.

I couldn’t finish this in two hours (the wordiness of the descriptions takes its toll, especially with a non-native speaker). Based on what I was able to play, it was a hilarious, fun experience, and definitely worth checking out for the language used. The slight unevenness of the puzzles (some easy, some guess-the-verb or otherwise a bit on the unclear side) didn’t distract too much. 8 1/2

(I played to the end after the two-hour mark, and the final puzzle felt

a bit drawn-out, and I am not sure if all female players appreciate its subject matter (I am a male myself, but it just crossed my mind), even if it is relatively innocent. Anyway, it feels like the ending - the trip home and what happened afterwards - is not as strong as the other parts of the game. The game could have very well ended when the main characters exit the gates of the location where the ritual took place. There are some long passages of text after that, and one grows a bit weary of the wordy style by that point.

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