I had downloaded this early, but didn’t get around to it until just now. Which I’m happy about, because whoof, that timed text in the earlier versions…
But yeah, without the keep-hitting-the-spacebar-to-make-the-text-show-up, this is a polished little game. Not going to set the world on fire, but a thoroughly enjoyable short (took me 23 minutes) lightly humorous dungeon crawl about an apprentice mage investigating a mining accident.
The puzzles were very gentle: I almost always found it immediately clear when you could use an object and when you were supposed to keep exploring, and the map was an easy-to-keep-track-of but pleasantly varied line with only one- or two-room offshoots in various directions, each of which also had clear indications of when you could accomplish something there. I think the only time I had to backtrack is that I hadn’t filled the waterskin with oil at the start of the game. Well, and I guess I tried telekinesis on the monocle at the end before using Gareth’s skeleton arm.
But it always felt like I had something to do and something to look for: the pacing was totally solid.
As usual with these things, I would have put the clicks in slightly different places: maybe a brief inventory along the bottom of the screen because clicking through to the full inventory every time felt unnecessary. But overall this was a very smooth example of the choice-based game with inventory puzzles. And it looks like this might be the author’s first game, at least here? Bravo.
Edit: Oh, and the progression of your telekinesis getting more and more useless was great: cracked me up every time. Oh, you’re going to try and lift a “large boulder” that’s almost certainly heavier than your stated capabilities? No problem. … Oh, you want to lift a large wardrobe? Forget it, you need a boost for that, and you’ll burn out the helper item doing it. … Pick up a small piece of glass from just out of reach? Sorry, you’re too tired. Brilliant.
