Well, the two knights could have danced around for a bit before putting black in check. But crucially each knight changes the colour of its square with every move. If white's knight is on black and black's knight is on white, then they've each made the same number of moves, which means black moved last, which means black moved while in check and was still in check at the end of their turn which is impossible.
AlexTFish
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A member registered Jan 05, 2017
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What a fascinating game! We loved the linguistic and exploration aspects of it so much. Really interesting and satisfying staring at this list of texts and slowly working out what words/morphemes mean what. Thanks so much for making it!
We found the same bug as described by Christina 23 days ago, and so were unable to complete the game. We tried 3 times to drink the (presumably final) concoction, but it never helped get past the snakes. We were always told either "you are feelin peculiar" [sic] or "you experience bodily disquiet", and lost half our health, and sometimes at that point died and sometimes recovered. Either way it always teleports us back to just north of the fields, which is annoying when we'd been about to enter the burial mound. We're pretty confident we've understood the recipe correctly, including the negative element and the correct mushrooms; we tried 2 or 3 copies of the ingredient that was plural; we were always making it with the ingredients in top to bottom order. We wondered if in the cases where we drink the concoction and manage to recover after losing half health that might mean we're now immune to snake poison, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
We also had a weird case where we lost all lives in our first game; started a second one immediately; and the generated language was *very nearly* identical. The word for the water trough and one other were different, but everything else was exactly the same - grammar, vocab, structure etc. First time the water trough was "water"+an unknown morpheme, but second time it was "water"+"warning" which made us wonder if we need to avoid using water from the trough in our concoctions.
Seems like our journey was quite different to several people here! Maybe because the puzzle's been tweaked (we were playing version 1.25) or maybe because we're used to Mystery Hunt style puzzles. We spotted the cryptic numbers at the bottom of each puzzle and considered a few interpretations, though we progressed through puzzles 1-3 in the normal way (MOBSTER, RESET etc). We were carefully noting down each letter that was obscured in case those spelled something. It was around puzzle 4 or 5 that we realised what the letters at the bottom mean (it helps that we're veterans of Edrith's Quizzes that use the same notation, and puzzles 4-5 are two of the easiest sequences to spot) - though even there there was some reconsideration of inferred rules because 4 can be solved in "ortho-Boggle" style with no diagonals, but 5 can't. At that point we went back and solved 2-5 in the true way, though we still had no idea what to do with 1 or 6. Around this point we had the idea to start highlighting leftover letters and found the connection to the bottom-right clue as well. From that point 7, 9 and 10 were straightforward (though 10 played some fun tricks with the blobs); we'd realised some of the words are listed reversed, but 9 was I think the clearest confirmation that it's specifically the right-hand words that are mirrored. We'd been expecting a metapuzzle so solved 11 fairly easily, and found 0 didn't really tell us anything new - only confirmed the rules we'd already inferred. Then on about the third or fourth look back at puzzle 1 we finally worked out what 1 was doing (I've only heard of one of the five given kinds of cookie, but thankfully my wife reads American recipes) and knocked that one out. 12 was a very satisfying conclusion, drawing everything together, and so delightful how the final extraction could only by solved by combining three strands of "leftovers of 12", "traceable string in 12" and "English letter patterns". Amusingly, the one thing we missed until the final page was the count of answers - we hadn't noticed that there were exactly twelve words to find in each puzzle, even though we'd found them all!
Thanks so much for making the puzzle, and now we're very much looking forward to trying the sequel :)
Super cool game!
I particularly love the way that roughly after each Act, you work out more of what's going on.
Spoiler discussion in rot13:
Ol gur gvzr lbh'ir svyyrq va nyy bs Npg 1 lbh jbex bhg gur guhaqrepyncf ner jura crbcyr qvr. Ol raq bs Npg 2 lbh'ir ernyvfrq gung crbcyr ner sbetrggvat gur crbcyr jub qvr. Ol npg 3 lbh ernyvfr gur crbcyr jub'er nobhg gb qvr fgneg erzrzorevat whfg n zvahgr orsber gurl qvr. Naq vg'f bayl ol gur raq gung lbh jbex bhg gung vg'f gur bgure jnl nebhaq, gung znxvat crbcyr erzrzore vf jung npghnyyl xvyyf gurz fubegyl nsgrejneqf. Nyfb ernyyl yvxr gur jnl lbh pna jbex bhg fprarf gung ner bhgfvqr gur hfhny cnggrea, yvxr crefba 12, be gur rkgen fprar 25.
Jr qvq guvax gung n srj ovgf frrzrq n ovg neovgenel. Jvgu nyy gur vgrzf yvxr gur cbpxrg jngpu, oenpryrg, evat, qbyy, tha, naq xrl trggvat cnffrq nebhaq, jr jrer fher gurer jbhyq or fbzr jnl gur vgrzf ner xrl gb gur phefr.
Gur raqvat jnf n ovg hafngvfsnpgbel, orpnhfr vg jnfa'g ng nyy pyrne jura guvatf unq ernyyl raqrq. V cnegvphyneyl qba'g yvxr gur jnl gung nabgure rznvy pna neevir ohg lbh qba'g trg nal vaqvpngvba bs vg. Jr jrer fcraqvat n juvyr gelvat gb jbex bhg jung gb qb abj, jnagrq gb tb onpx gb erivrj gur Oevrs, naq jrer fubpxrq gb qvfpbire n frpbaq rznvy. V jvfu gurer unq orra n abgvsvpngvba fbzrjurer "Na rznvy unf neevirq".
Nyfb gurer jrer ybgf bs "[haqrsvarq]"f sybngvat nebhaq nyy gur gvzr, vapyhqvat va gur svany navzngvba.
Ohg rira jvgu nyy gung fnvq, gur tnzr jnf nznmvat naq V jvfu gurer jrer zber guvatf yvxr vg! Irel jryy qbar naq gunaxf sbe funevat!
Just finished the demo (v3)! That's very cool.
My favourite bit was the "This is a place of balance. All are welcome here, regardless of appearance." That was a beautiful level of hint.
I agree with other commenters who said that mouse look is probably not worth the fiddliness - apart from anything else, I prefer to do most walking around with the keyboard, and it's weird to have the guy keep looking in the direction where I last left my mouse. Especially early on before you have the lantern.
Still, I'm keen to see where you go with this concept in future! Thanks for sharing this work, it was great fun!
The Dark Queen of Mortholme comments · Replied to BritishPolitenessPolice in The Dark Queen of Mortholme comments
Game is looking good so far! I like the reasonably challenging nature of the levels and the boss.
Unfortunately the boss was rather vulnerable to just "run in, do one sweeping attack, run away, wait, repeat": no matter which attacks the boss does they don't need anything except that one pattern. It's possible to jump over the boss's low attack, so maybe it'd be nice if (maybe 2/3 of the way through the boss's health) she starts doing a low attack too quickly to run away from so you have to jump over it instead? Something like that to mix it up a bit.
At the moment the interaction with characters in the town epilogue is somewhat painful as I can't find any way to progress through their text: LMB causes the character to just attack, which is always embarrassing in peaceful village zones, and pressing "up" a second time doesn't advance either. I just need to wait, which is rather boring.
Apart from that, though, this is looking very promising. I particularly like 1) the animations - very fluid and satisfying, somewhat reminiscent of the original 90s rotoscoped Prince of Persia; and 2) the hidden areas - though as another commenter said, they do want some more reason for existing than they have at the moment, obviously.
Good stuff!