today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. titles that rhyme
The Master’s Lair by Stefan Hoffman
Playtime: 2 hours (ran out of time, did not reach an ending)
The one where: you try to rob your magic teacher’s house
- game is a custom executable
Fair or un-, these always prompt the question: “are the benefits [to the player, I’m selfish] of this custom game format outweighing the costs [time to download and install, etc.]?”
It sounded like people were having issues with the Windows download, so I played this in Android. As those who know me irl can attest, I hate downloading apps so this was a real sacrifice.
Playing on a phone dictated using the multiple choice input option (the game advertises that it offers a choice of parser or choice format), and also meant I was on a tiny screen and unable to copy and paste quotes. (I still brought quotes, dear reader, I just want you to appreciate the required effort.)
In an unfortunate turn of events, there ended up being a *lot* of lag with the game. Clicking a hyperlink resulted in a several second pause before any action was taken. At one point the app auto-closed—when I reopened it the delay was improved, but still notable. I’m not an Android power user, nor was I running it on The World’s Most Powerful Phone, but it was a bit surprising to me to have so many issues with a text-based app. I persevered, but I’m sure the friction affected my impressions, as well as how far I was able to get in the game, because . . . every . . . action . . . took . . . a . . . small . . . eternity. (For reference, I wrapped around 410 points in, which is not particularly far.)
Other than the delay issue, the game worked great. (Although I couldn’t find the mentioned in-game hints, but there is a separate walkthrough though, which was helpful).
So, to return to the “was it wort it” question–I take it that the draw of the custom executable here was (1) the ability to offer both parser and choice, (2) the ability to offer both English and German, and perhaps (3) the ability to offer an app. These aren’t particularly ideas that appeal to me (I mean, I like parser and choice but I’m probably going to only play one version of a given game), so I probably would have had more fun if this had just been in one of the standard formats.
- everything else
This is a classic fantasy set-up—the PC wants to rob the instructor’s house, which of course is chock full of magic artifacts.
I wouldn’t have minded a bit more backstory. There are actually some intriguing ANTI-sympathetic beats with the PC near the beginning, I was curious to learn more. And why steal this claw specifically? Feels like there’s a story there.
Generally I enjoyed the puzzling. It has that sort of puzzle-game “why would someone hide a key behind an illusory shower tile” vibe but what I saw of the puzzles seemed fair. Using items in the choice-based set-up was pretty easy (although at one point I was confused about the difference between “put A on B” and “tip A on B”).
The mechanic with reanimating the taxidermy animals and talking to them was also fun and added an interesting layer to previously visited rooms.
There’s the typical dose of anachronistic humor here, which was moderately entertaining.
I wish less scenery had been implemented. Perhaps I noticed this especially because of how painful taking actions was, but there was a lot implemented that didn’t yield useful or even atmospheric information:
(here both the “pentagram” and “paint” were hypertext)
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
I think the cover art could connect more to the game. It has a sort of sleek aesthetic that makes me think of smooth, one-level games (e.g., Bejeweled or something), and it focuses on a gem. In reality our primary object is to steal a claw, maybe put that in the art?
Overall, if it works well for you at a technical level, a perfectly good parser puzzler, but I think I needed more of a “plus” factor
Gameplay tips / typos
I think this game was translated into English from German. There were a few cases where the game treated as synonyms words that I think are a bit further apart:
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“cupboard” and “closet” – to me, a cupboard is a standalone (i.e., you could buy one at IKEA, you could slide a cupboard across the floor), whereas a closet is built of the same material as the walls and constructed at the time of the house
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“writing” and 'font" – people use “font” and “typeface” similarly (this simplification pains my inner typography nerd). So, say, Comic Sans is a font. The actual letters on a mysterious note are writing.
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“toilet flushing”—to me, flushing is just the verb of what a toilet does. Since this is a space we can open I think it would be the “toilet tank”
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“well” and “fountain” –generally speaking I think a fountain shoots a stream of water out of part of it (e.g., the Trevi Fountain). The one in the game is a deep pool of water that can be covered, so it sounds more like a well.
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“tongs” and “pliers”—if we’re talking about something used with food, it’s really only tongs. Pliers are heavy-duty items bought in hardware stores / used to pull out someone’s teeth as a form of torture in movies.