Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort

Tiberius Thingamus (2009)


Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort. Right off the title sounds weird, and it becomes a tone used throughout the game that grates on my nerves. Here’s an example:

Ye standeth in ye castle courtyard. Bountiful greenery & greenery-like things bloometh all o'er ye place. Yon curious buildings stand at all sides of ye, except for ye west which is occupied by ye castle walls and yon drawbridge. Also, here there occupieth ye grounds yon weird squirrel.

Writing like this makes it a chore to play the game, slowing me down as I try to figure out what the author is saying. It might make sense, but it sure doesn't flow. Though I did find if you could get past this there was actually some nice writing.

I didn’t play the game for long, so I can’t give it a proper review, but I did find that the game relied on some ludicrous puzzles. Climbing up the chimney? I was picturing a fire cooking the stew, but with all that crazy writing it's hard to get a clear mental image. I also ran into a set of riddles, and I'm figuring everybody is going to have to turn to the walkthrough to get through those.

I scored this game a 5. I didn't get far into it so I didn't run into any technical errors, but the writing felt off and the story is cliché. There's not a lot of room for playing around, Adrift is pretty strict and there's a limited number of verbs, and everything felt empty with no real NPCs around. Strange for any castle I’d figure. I’m sorry; I just couldn’t get into it.