I kept chipping away at this over a few days, and finally finished and saw an ending with 37/55 points. I really tried to resist looking up hints, but I eventually looked up one Invisiclue. I did enjoy this! A lot of work’s been put into it, and the implementation is EXTREMELY thorough. Every object seems recognized; it’s wild how many objects had responses to say, searching, or pushing them. Lots of research, great setting.
I never played Deadline, but this made me think back to 90s parser IF: with how the NPCs move around room by room, with the scoring, and with how open-ended and non-directed your goals and the map is. It’s very much about exploring the map and solving puzzles spread out over the map and getting points, instead of something more linearly paced and segmented (which I feel IF coming out nowadays tends towards a bit more?). Something like… Sunset Over Savannah is a game that comes to my mind as something this structurally feels more reminiscent of. It’s not a breadcrumb trail where you’re steadily solving a progression of puzzles and getting closer to the ending and finding out “the truth,” so much as solving a bunch of separate puzzles across the map, it felt like.
The beginning parts are a bit more directed, and it felt pretty satisfying, that whole section when you’re initially investigating the gardens and chapel and finding evidence for poisoning. After that, a hint pops up about exploring the priori, then it gets really open-ended and the player is more left to their own devices.
Regarding the map: I probably wouldn’t want diagonal directions in this, as they would’ve made the map more confusing to navigate for me, I’m pretty sure. I leaned on the in-game map command a lot, and it was very helpful. The graphical map was also nice. Eventually by the end, I’d gotten my bearings on the map. Same with the number of monks running around: initially a lot of names to take in, but I eventually could keep them in my head and generally knew where they ended up (and spell Remigio correctly!). It’s minor, but the the start is slightly overwhelming with all the monks running around, like some other people said. I didn’t ever use the HERE command, or most of the other special commands other than waiting for certain times, and I personally probably wouldn’t make use of a GOTO all that much.
More on my experience esp. with the puzzles, spoiler-y
It did feel dubious doing some of the things. Looking in the chests was the first clue I found once it opened up; I’d be curious what order other players solved it, but seemed like both an obvious place to look for clues and also seemed like something that skirted a moral line, especially for a monk! Your stealing in general is quickly acknowledged. I was also just allowed to steal religious offerings, which seemed even worse! Well, what’s an adventure game protagonist to do, I guess.
So the path I solved it was, I found the letters in the chests, found the berries (which… basically seemed to confirm the culprit for my character very early in to a perhaps surprising degree? It seemed fairly circumstantial). After that I started asking around about the culprit with the other brothers. And that basically settled into two seeming places I’d want to get into, first the kitchen (you can also just follow the culprit to see him go there so that’s great) and then the library. I spent a lot of time stuck around this spot, on something like 11 points. Had a cat which seemed like an obvious puzzle object, then the two brothers blocking my way in each spot… And the cat is loved by both of those monks, so I spent a lot of time carrying ole Pax around.
Wilfred’s tiredness eventually pushed me to think more in that direction (that’s a good clue), but I spent a lot of time looking to get and boil water to make a drugged tea for him. Presumably there’s a reason there’s absolutely no water to be found anywhere! I spent a lot of time looking for a bucket and rope for the well (in desperation: throw the cat down the well? Nope). How hard is it to find water in this place?? That’s not an argument about plausibility (I know it’s a puzzle game), but it felt like the game obviously knew I wanted water because of the empty, un-gettable basin and the well, and so it seemed like something being obviously hidden from me, a puzzle. I also tried rubbing the mandrake root on the cat, since Wilfred loved the cat so much, no dice! After looking at the mandrake root description more closely and how it mentioned smoke, I figured out how to use it.
Remirez in the kitchen, I had to look up the invisiclue for. I was thinking along the lines of the solution involving either the cat (which is the topic that stood out to me when I talked to him), or the pilgrim badge from his chest since those felt like the puzzle clues I had for him. I perhaps wrongly interpreted that he was lonely more than specifically homesick. I also couldn’t seem to ask anyone about the badge to find something like it or find out more about why Ramirez had it, or find out anything about its depicted St Francis. Maybe the way to clue the actual solution (or the solution I found) for him more, might be to have Remirez give more of a response when I ask Remirez about Aelred because his short response made me think elsewhere. (like: Remirez could tell me Aelred talks to him frequently, and they talk about the old country a lot?) or maybe I can learn that Remirez really loves cooking, and herbs? I’ll admit I was starting to skim the herb descriptions by that point, so I was only looking at the part that talked about their medicinal properties and effects and I was skimming past the part of the basil description that mattered, which hey, maybe player error.
I also missed the candle until the game really told me I needed a light source. That’s perhaps good… But I didn’t read the items in the storage as a separate object from the shelves in the way it was written, so I just searched the shelves my first couple times through that room.
My very last reload before solving (when I finally knew all the steps but ran out of time so I reloaded), I waited until office hours, gifted Remirez, tried to go get the candle, had to join in the singing and wait, was then told I had no reason to get the candle yet, so I skipped time until the next office hour, tried going down the undercroft to trigger being able to get the candle then went back and sang again, THEN grabbed the candle, then waited until the next office hour to finally get into the undercroft. So the player’s certainly meant to do other stuff during all that, but I didn’t have any other particular leads to look into and I really wanted to see what was down there. Still, my feeling is I don’t know if the song room needs to block the player from moving past it, during office hours, as it didn’t seem like that was part of a puzzle, unless waiting in the bell tower counts as a puzzle for that.
This game captures a lot of the object related actions I tried, to an impressive degree, but I did really want to interrogate the other monks a bit with the evidence I was finding, which never seemed to work. Like showing them the evidence (mostly contraband) seemed like something the game pushed against, but I really wanted to ask Wilfred about any missing manuscripts after reading the incriminating note. More minor, but I wanted to ask the belltower monk if they’d seen anyone up there, I wanted to ask the chatty monk all the way to the west about the meaning of the pilgrim badge (or somehow try to learn more about it from Remirez), I wanted to ask the infirmary monk if they’d seen anyone skulking around the cabinet. That’s one of the things with ASK/TELL I suppose, not being able to differentiate what I want to know about a certain object. Some of the evidence didn’t quite feel meaningful in terms of progressing the mystery: some felt like dead ends and I didn’t have anywhere to look next, or sometimes they overlapped knowledge; after solving getting into the library, solving the cabinet after that, and then finding the note, it felt like I got a bunch of points, but two of those things told me things I already knew. Actually, thinking about it, I found a lot of evidence for stealing, but none that seems to actually tie the culprit to the actual murder, did it?
It’s a very solid game! The ending did feel satisfying. And the setting was fascinating to explore. I don’t think I ran into any of the bugs other people mentioned. I don’t know if the small sticking points I had with the puzzles followed the same thought process as other players did. I also don’t have much of an idea what I’d try next to get the rest of the points I missed, but then I’m also satisfied with my ending. (I picked mercy). The remaining things I have that feel like possible unresolved puzzle pieces are the cat, a mirror, the well, a locked crypt, maybe all the open high windows everywhere… and it really feels like the three creeds must be used somewhere. Also I could examine the top of one of the statues and saw a lion thing, which felt like… something.
Final score
The score was made up as follows:
5 found stolen psalter
5 found henbane poison
5 read the offer note
3 got into the Library
3 opened medicine cabinet
2 bribed Remigio
2 found letters to Rose
2 found key to Restricted Garden
1 found way to carry contraband
1 learned about priory’s history
1 matched symptoms of the poison
1 consulted Registrum Fratrum
1 consulted Aelred’s Herbal
1 discovered a source of light
1 participated in an office
1 noticed suspicious symptoms
1 identified a plant
1 learned schedule of offices
37 total (out of 55)
