(I put Mulldoon Legacy to the side until the long and dark winter months. Instead I grabbed this from my to-play folder. A funny troper’s delight of old school pulp SF, with some ingenious puzzles to break your teeth on: Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night! - Details (ifdb.org))
Martian Sunrise
Don’t you hate it when you’ve let yourself be captured by your nemesis, got into his latest death-trap for his amusement (and that of the viewers), and he can’t even afford you the courtesy of staying to watch and applaud your “certain death”?
Well, it happens at the beginning of Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night. What follows are a series of delightfully pulpy escapades, each fully playing into the expected Bond/supervillain tropes while presenting an honest challenge at the same time.
Beneath the breathless location descriptions, the game is actually built very efficiently. Everything is elaborately described, but the rooms contain just the information and equipment necessary. No silver trinkets or red herrings to divert the attention.
Despite the jokingly over-the-top writing style, the puzzles are no laughing matter. Even with careful deduction, it’s necessary to fail and restore a few times to gain essentiel bits of information to take into account.
The game cheerfully plays with the awkwardness of describing a “show” from a visual medium in the language of a text-adventure. Not only does this mismatch produce some comedic effect, the game derives its most challenging puzzle from it.
Very polished, the author did all the necessary work to account for the large number of possible combinations in the middle game.
Due to a slight misreading on my part, I managed to destroy my home planet in the endgame. Hopefully you won’t.
It certainly is worth trying.