I somehow managed to get stuck in the western passage at the start of the game (it let me in but not out). This rather spoiled what looked like an extremely promising game.
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The Faeries Of Haelstowne's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Writing (General Quality) | #1 | 4.207 | 4.316 |
| Story (Plot, Setting & Objective) | #3 | 4.155 | 4.263 |
| Overall Rating | #5 | 3.591 | 3.684 |
| Presentation (Text, Graphics & Sound) | #7 | 3.437 | 3.526 |
| Puzzles | #7 | 3.232 | 3.316 |
| Help, Hints and/or Instructions | #8 | 3.283 | 3.368 |
| Implementation | #15 | 2.514 | 2.579 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Overview of Game
A supernatural mystery set in a sleepy English village in the 1920s.
Requirements to Play
Play online or download
Comments
A strangely hostile game.
I expected a cosy mystery with the comforts of modern games. Instead, I found myself dumped unceremoniously into an enormous world (nearly 50 rooms are accessible without solving any puzzles), with very little guidance as to what to do next, no stakes-raising progression for thousands of moves, and meagre rewards for puzzles, usually just one dead-end room with a few items. The player character is as uncooperative as Rameses, refusing for instance to look behind objects even when actually moving the object reveals something, and deciding conversation topics for himself.
The interface outright mocks me: not only is it exacting about what verbs and nouns it accepts (“photograph” is not a synonym for “photographs”), even when it understands me, it demands a rephrase instead of silently accepting the synonym. Most items are nondescript, discouraging exploration. Even the aggressively bright yellow background (and the choice of an engine where the author, not the player, sets the game’s appearance), makes it clear:
The game does not want me there. The villagers, under quaint and polite appearances, want Arthur gone. The game is rooting for them, not for the player.
I’m rather a sucker for that sort of thing. It’s thrilling to enter a world, not because that world unrolled the red carpet for me, but because I earnt my way in. This pairs great with the mystery plot.
However, I think it goes rather too far. I don’t think the game could be completed without hints. For example, this early puzzle is outright unfair: a window in a recess, where the window is a critical object but totally nondescript, and the description of the recess is the indication.
I also recommend making background colour configurable: some days I couldn’t play (or had to lie to f.lux about my longitude) because the yellow is really hard on the eyes.
I’m not sure about the choice(? or engine limitation?) of listing items at the end (“Arthur saw…”) rather than folding them into the room descriptions — doesn’t seem to match the theme, and clashes with the rather flowery descriptions.
Overall, I’m glad I gave the game the time it demanded (not a small ask, given the many comp entries!), but I wish I’d been rewarded with more scenery along the way and the puzzles had been fairer.
Small disambiguation bug: x paperback asks whether you mean the photography book or the paperback book, and read paperback reads the photography book.
Typos: “It was impossible determine”, “saw rood screen”
Well, it's not for everyone and that's for sure! But thanks for giving it a look in any case.
Curiously enough, the pale yellow with black was chosen (with a bit of research) as the most readable text theme (as opposed to black on white or Adventuron's default white on black theme). I did have a plan to provide a choice of themes - a bit of a faff to do in Adventuron, but possible - but ran out of time with that one. I may put it in at some point if I get the time and impetus to do it.
Many thanks for the typo spotting. The book disambiguation thing is something I'm aware of but isn't very satisfactorily resolvable within the limitations of the engine so imperfect though it may be, it is what it is for the moment.
The window? Well, the window is up high and out of sight and the recess is there and described, and there is a hint that tells you what to do... I thought that was one of the fairest puzzles! But I appreciate you didn't find it so. Could the game be completed without the hints (or the explicit STUCK instructions)? Probably not, except for very determined players. Does that matter terribly? Not really, to me.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. I will attend to what needs attending to, particularly missing scenery and suchlike.
It's interesting to see a game that recreates so closely the look and feel of a classic English detective novel. Was there a conscious decision to create this experience in Adventuron rather than Inform, and if so, what was the motivation behind it (considering the latter very likely required a lot more work)?
Hi - yes, it was a quite conscious decision. There are a number of reasons for it, that I should probably explore in a proper post-mortem at some point, but to summarise: firstly, I'm familiar with Adventuron, having made a previous game in it. I'm a writer really, not at all a programmer, and I have very little experience of coding. I'd have had to learn Inform from scratch and I wanted to get the game out of my head and into finished form before I went off the idea, so I stuck with Adventuron. Secondly, I like the engine and the community around it. There's a strong nostalgic appeal to Adventuron, especially for me since before this, the last time I had any interest in computers was at least 30 years ago. I like the way Adventuron runs in the browser and the way it lets you control elements of style to a degree that's not possible with languages that run through an interpreter, like Inform. Also there's a strong community around Adventuron and a lot of involvement from the engine's creator, and that makes me feel vested in it to a degree. Thirdly, there has been a definite impression that Adventuron is only really capable of making simple, retro-style text adventures, often with two-word input. It does that very well, but I'm more interested in creating longer, more narrative works (I write stories, basically) and so part of the reason for doing this in Adventuron is to try and push its envelope a bit and show that it is capable, however imperfectly, of doing something like this. It's certainly a lot more work and it's certainly a less smooth experience that if I'd done it in Inform (despite considerable effort to knock the rough edges off the system) but at the very least I hope I've shown that the capability is there, if one is prepared to work for it.
I loved the world you've created, as well as the mystery of the fairies and the missing Vicar. However, I was unclear as to what my short term goals were, and I was unable to figure out what any of the puzzles were, let alone solve them. I spoke with Teblow, but got no real useful information. When I asked for hints or said I was stuck, I also got no real answers. The answers in STUCK mode were not clear based on my exploration of the house.
Hello, thanks for your comment. I'm glad you've enjoyed what you've seen so far.
This is a long, narrative-driven game with a lot of detail involved and investment of time required, and that might well not be your kind of thing. However, if you're minded to persevere then the HINTS and STUCK should get you through.
STUCK stops short of being a command-by-command walkthrough, but the detail is there. From the STUCK menu, 2. tells you what your objective is in this part of the game, 3. tells you how to procure an item to access inaccessible locations in the house, 4. tells you where to find the vital thing (to accomplish 2) and 5. tells you where to find the subject (of 2). The other thing to do would be to ask for a HINT in the study.
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