The Reliquary of Epiphanius
Francesco Giovannangelo
This game was lovely right until the moment where it stopped working for me, which seems to be several moves before @odetolava got stuck (Chloe's IFComp Reviews 2025 - #2 by odetolava ). I was at the point where the spoiler in that review reveals the solution to a puzzle I was also stuck on—except it then didn’t work, and I couldn’t continue the walkthrough and go south.
So as-is, this seems like a lovely game that was not beta-tested well enough. Not only did the walkthrough not work for either of us, but there were a lot of other odd bits that beta-testing should have uncovered: an unimplemented door, a “locked car” not set ‘lockable’, a major change you could accomplish in a room that didn’t cause the room description to change at all.
It’s a shame because the game was obviously lovingly put together, and everything the author thought of has very nice responses! And the music was nice, and the maps were lovely. They just didn’t notice the stuff they didn’t think of, nor realize that their walkthrough could be broken.
Did the author have anything to say? Probably!
Did I have anything to do? Yes, until a bug (I think) blocked my progress. (I have transcripts if the author would find them helpful!)