Winter Break at Hogwarts by Brian Davies
I’m afraid I didn’t care for this game at all.
It was solidly built and the descriptions were well-written. Those are plusses. The problem is that this game is sprawling and nearly empty of content.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of huge dungeons to map in the first place, but I can be brought around. Start me in a small area and unlock other portions of the map and put interesting things in the map. This game doesn’t do those things. I spent the entire two hours mapping things, and didn’t even get the entire castle mapped. I found the first puzzle 52 minutes after starting the game. A lot of the rooms are literally devoid of anything at all; they just serve to make the map bigger, or to make the representation of Hogwarts more accurate. They also make the game worse, I’m sorry to say.
Other things, in combination with the need to map out a huge world, also make the game less fun. A hunger mechanic wasn’t my favourite, and the Grand Staircase was just frustrating. I get it’s a thing from the books and films, but it made for a bad experience.
There are also certain implementation issues that were irritating (e.g. the description for the Long Gallery North End saying there were stairs down, but with no actual exit down; or the exit from the Training Grounds to the Main Grounds not being mentioned in the description at all) and certain map design features (exit north out of one room, and end up entering from the east into another) that compounded the mapping woes.
Now, here’s the really irksome thing. A lot of this could have been avoided had I not downloaded the game to play in an interpreter, which is my preference. If you play the game online, there’s a map included. If you download it, though, there’s no map. I wish there had been an indication anywhere saying “Hey, play this online or load up the .html file. Don’t run it in an interpreter.”
Even with a map, though, the castle is still sprawling and very empty.
So, no, I can’t say I enjoyed the game, or that I would have enjoyed it had I had a map. That said, overall, it is a well-implemented game with good writing. I hope that the author continues to submit games to comps - though perhaps ones smaller in scope.
Edit: I hate how harsh this review sounds. The game itself really is put together well. Had it taken place on a map 1/3 the size, there might have been something solid, there.