The Vambrace of Destiny by Arthur DiBianca
DiBianca is by now extremely well known as the author of streamlined puzzle games with limited command sets. The Vambrace of Destiny is no exception. I got exactly what I was expecting as I went into the game, but since I was expecting enjoyment, that’s not a bad thing.
DiBianca worlds tend to be relatively sparse, and his prose tends to be relatively terse and functional. Everything is made so that it will not detract from the puzzles; red herrings are not on the menu. That’s all true for The Vambrace of Destiny, except that it had one laugh-out-loud moment for me in the very beginning:
Zolmaskar did not know that we possess the Vambrace of Destiny, a Krotonian artifact that is fortunately small enough for you to wear. (Krotonians were quite large, but Destiny was the king’s young daughter.)
The point of this are the puzzles, and the puzzles are good. There are two main components to that. The first component is the well-timed progression of puzzle structure. First, we have single commands. Then, we get combinations of commands; we get timed bonuses that we must bring from another location; we get situations with state (that is, in which commands do not always do the same thing, depending on the exact turn in some sequence); we learn to teleport; and finally, we sneakily receive a verb-noun command, although it is implement as two separate verbs. The complexity keeps increasing, but never overwhelms.
The second component is that all puzzles have good cluing. By trying out different spells, you get subtle hints as to what might and what might not work. I managed to solve almost the entire game without hint, and the places where I used hints were basically just cases where I had forgotten about a glyph, or failed to notice something I could tag.
So, another classy game in Arthur’s ever-expanding oeuvre! I’m already looking forward to next year’s sequel, The Pauldron of Chastity.