Hebe by Marina Diagourta
Playtime: 1 hour 14 minutes (did not reach an ending)
The one where: puzzling is required to rescue the other Greek gods
This is a puzzle-focused game. It immediately sets on you on a quest, and I do appreciate that we get directly into it.
There’s an interesting contrast between some of the room descriptions, which are overly detailed, and the PC and NPC’s characterization and relationships, which are underdeveloped to the detriment of the emotional stakes of the game.
(It’s mildly annoying in a puzzle game when room descriptions are full of unnecessary details because it makes the player has to sort through plot-irrelevant chaff. So particularly in puzzle games it’s only a good idea to add more description if the additional description is really carrying its own weight in terms of specificity, mood, bravura writing, etc, which wasn’t the case here.)
The main strengths of the game were:
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The demonstrable love of classical antiquity. You can see the omphalos and go to the Prytaneion in Athens! My usage of “agora” is probably going to increase now. (Longer tangent, but my brother recently was telling me about Seven Against Thebes, a story about seven heroes of the generation before the Iliad[one of them is Diomedes’s dad] [and we complain now about how so much media is sequels!], so every time I went to Thebes in the game I was like “Thebes mentioned!”).
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The fast travel system. This is not a game where the logistics of sailing or horse-rental are going to slow you down. It has the action movie feeling of like, we need to go to Delphi? Smash cut to: Delphi. That’s fun!
What eventually got me was just a consistent feeling that the game was a bit buggy (I had to restore once when I was un-able to exit a location), plus the lack of a walkthrough. The puzzles are already fairly disconnected feeling from the game (i.e., they are classic puzzle formats without any in-universe explanation for why someone would build so many secret compartments)–that, coupled with the sort of low emotional stakes I mentioned earlier also made easier to disconnect from this game when it got bumpy.
I put some hints on the puzzles I solved under the cut in case it’s helpful to anyone else.
I will say though I actually was having a pretty good time while I was playing, the transition to “actually I’m done” was quick and didn’t really anger me, if that makes sense.
If I were the author, my priorities would be:
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A walkthrough (I won’t re-type my entire Position Statement here, but I feel strongly about this!)
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fixing some of the bugs
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Expanding more on the PC and NPCs to give some more grounded feeling stakes to this. The most intriguing moment for me with the PC was when she charges at Kronos with a club in the first scene—is there a reason she specifically, out of all of the gods present, feels it’s her duty to fight him? Is that normal behavior for her? I think some additional backstory could go a long way. And the other gods who appear in the game don’t do very much, which is a missed opportunity.
Front matter | ||
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Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
We didn’t get much characterization for the PC during the game, but I like the attitude she’s giving on the cover.
Overall, I had fun with the puzzles I solved, but it had elements that pushed me away and not much “stickiness” to keep me going
Hebe wolfbiter transcript - Copy.txt (196.3 KB)
Gameplay tips / typos
- “You can see a backdrop named agora here.”?
Hints for the various locations I solved, in case they help anyone.
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Temple of Poseidon (near Sounio)
- hmm, the one thing that seems to stand out here is the column with the four rotatable rings
- you need to rotate them
- the command ”turn second ring” works (they just cycle through the available symbols)
- the correct sequence is: top ring = barley, second ring = wheat, third ring = grapes, fourth ring = empty vine
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Temple of the Aulidean Artemis (near Aulis)
- hmmm if you look closely at the statue of Artemis there are locks on it
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you have to find two keys nearby
- if you look closely at the sundial, there’s a line about midday and midnight, and tells you the current time
- you have to be at the sundial at noon and midnight. Strangely, the description for midnight notes that the sun is rising, putting me in the mind of one of those “you’re in the Arctic Circle” riddles
- there’s a command ”wait 6 hours” (you choose the number). You can also use ”z” which seems to wait five minutes
- when it is the right time, if you examine the sundial a hatch / drawer pops open, you can search the hatch / drawer and see a key
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the keys need to be put into the locks on the Artemis statue, which can then be pushed away
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the Necromanteion (near Ephyra)
- actually getting in there is a bit weird. You have to guess from the description of “North of Ephyra” that it’s a location, and type “enter” (similar to how you enter the other temples from near the other cities)
- have you tried talking to the priestess?
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she will tell you it’s traditional to make a sacrifice
- you can do that by ”put [thing] on altar”
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I sacrificed the sun key (after using it to solve the other puzzle), probably other things are sacrificeable
- this gives you an obol that you can give to Charon at East of Ephyra to go to the underworld
OK, I didn’t totally solve these but I have concepts of a plan
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Prytaneion Hall (near Athens)
- I didn’t finish so take with a grain of salt
- the writing on the parchment decodes using caesar cipher to a message telling you to light torches 2, 3, 6, 7, 8
- ??? there’s probably something else
- but if you think you have finished, you still need to find the trapdoor
- by moving everything off the carpet and moving the carpet
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Heroon of Kadmos (near Thebes)
- I mean I didn’t finish so take with several grain of salt but it sure seems like you need to find six items elsewhere and then arrange them from lightest to heaviest in the pans
- That being said I worry I softlocked my game in Kadmos, after I was there it wouldn’t let me go anywhere else (typing S had no effect), so maybe visit with caution