Avadon 3: Back to Spiderweb

Oh Joy and Happiness! One of my two very favorite game designers has released a new game! This is the final episode in the Avadon series!

I thought I would have trouble playing this unless I moved the computer back to my living room, but I put a pillow on my office chair and it seems to be greatly helping my hip problem (getting better). Normally I can't sit this long, but the pillow seems to have solved the problem!

OK! I have started Avadon 3! I may have been one of the first people to buy it from the Spiderweb site. I checked the site just after midnight (Pacific time) and it wasn't there. I checked it in the morning and it still wasn't there, so I downloaded the demo, and then the link to buy the game appeared! Hooray! So I junked the demo and installed the full game. I mean, there's no doubt I'm going to buy this game! I need to buy from the Spiderweb site because Steam doesn't allow different screen resolutions, and when you buy directly from Spiderweb, you can choose the size you want. Old eyes need large text! (Something Jeff will begin to appreciate in years to come—if not already!)

Update: Turns out that the screen resolution doesn't matter this time. I'm sitting close enough to the computer that I can play without my glasses (I am fervently nearsighted.) So I put the game onto the top resolution choice, and it's fine. The bonus is that I get to see more of the screen all at once. Goody!

I'm playing a Tinkermage again this time, as I did in Avadon 2, although this time I'm a female tinkermage, "Emerald" (after my precious Emerald, the mascot of this blog). I like that character because you basically get extra fighters in the form of your turrets. I don't think I could have completed the earlier game on "hard" if I hadn't been playing a Tinkermage. Also, it's a new kind of character! Fun!

So I have completed the initial explorations of the first area. I have a quest to dispatch wolves outside the camp, but so far I haven't figured out how to get outside the camp. I've also got the major quest from the camp commander, and a third one as well. I have  explored everything (I think!) and have acquired some nice initial items. Stole stuff from the storage rooms, and sold what I could. Bought a lockpick and a battle potion (that gives me two, because I found another one). Getting outside will be the puzzle. I will tackle it tomorrow!

So glad I don't have to move the computer!

More tomorrow, definitely! I cannot resist Spiderweb games! I have some fun weeks ahead!

Avadon The Warborn: Back to Spiderweb

Oh Joy and Happiness! One of my two very favorite game designers has released a new game! This is the final episode in the Avadon series!

I thought I would have trouble playing this unless I moved the computer back to my living room, but I put a pillow on my office chair and it seems to be greatly helping my hip problem (getting better). Normally I can't sit this long, but the pillow seems to have solved the problem!

OK! I have started Avadon 3! I may have been one of the first people to buy it from the Spiderweb site. I checked the site just after midnight (Pacific time) and it wasn't there. I checked it in the morning and it still wasn't there, so I downloaded the demo, and then the link to buy the game appeared! Hooray! So I junked the demo and installed the full game. I mean, there's no doubt I'm going to buy this game! I need to buy from the Spiderweb site because Steam doesn't allow different screen resolutions, and when you buy directly from Spiderweb, you can choose the size you want. Old eyes need large text! (Something Jeff will begin to appreciate in years to come—if not already!)

I'm playing a Tinkermage again this time, as I did in Avadon 2, although this time I'm a female tinkermage, "Emerald" (after my precious Emerald, the mascot of this blog). I like that character because you basically get extra fighters in the form of your turrets. I don't think I could have completed the earlier game on "hard" if I hadn't been playing a Tinkermage. Also, it's a new kind of character! Fun!

So I have completed the initial explorations of the first area. I have a quest to dispatch wolves outside the camp, but so far I haven't figured out how to get outside the camp. I've also got the major quest from the camp commander, and a third one as well. I have  explored everything (I think!) and have acquired some nice initial items. Stole stuff from the storage rooms, and sold what I could. Bought a lockpick and a battle potion (that gives me two, because I found another one). Getting outside will be the puzzle. I will tackle it tomorrow!

So glad I don't have to move the computer!

More tomorrow, definitely! I cannot resist Spiderweb games! I have some fun weeks ahead!

Next Entry

The Last Crown: Midnight Horror

Oh what fun! As we wait for the next in the magnificent Lost Crown series to be published, Jonathan Boakes has given us a nice little game that fits between the first and the much anticipated next game, Blackenrock. This isn't just a five-minute teaser, like the little Halloween Haunting gamlet Jonathan gave us a couple of years ago. This is a real game, with real puzzles and a real adventure, and it takes several hours to play. You can get it on Steam, or here: the Midnight Horror!

A little aside: for those who missed it (I was one of them. For whatever reason, I could not download the Halloween Haunting "game" in 2013 and always felt I had missed something important.) I found a YouTube playthrough of it. Here it is, the whole thing: Link to YouTube Halloween Haunting. (Sorry, I could not get the video to embed.) The only thing that it appears I missed was the first mention of the word "Blackenrock" and the voice at the end. Who is that? No doubt we will find out!

Anyway, this is more than just a little teaser! This is an actual game! With puzzles and people and moving around in Saxton! 

Yes! Nigel Danvers is still in Saxton! Even better, WE are back in Saxton!

And all our old friends are there too. Lucy and Nanny Noah (with George the doggie) and Rhys with Mr. Tibbs, and Station Master and Bob Tawney and Morgan Mankle. We seem only to be missing Mr. Oogle. Most of the action takes place inside the Bear, although we begin in Harbour Cottage:

Looks pretty good!

Nigel appears to have had a bit of a facelift. But then, time isn't exactly fixed in Saxton, is it? Notice that we still have our black and white with splashes of color. I still think that is just a brilliant, unique look that contributes massively to the atmosphere of these games, and I think it has a purpose in the games, too (if my theory about what's really going on is correct).

Of course, it's a short game so there aren't too many areas we can access, but those areas all looks really detailed and atmospheric. The village square has annoying children chanting and running around on Halloween. Harbour Cottage looks even more dilapidated than usual, after Nigel smashed through the wall in the last game. The mess has not yet been cleared up. (Golly, that happened on May Day and it's now Halloween! Ah well--time slips around in Saxton.)

Hmmmm. The street seems a bit wider here than previously!

So we have Station Master guarding the door, making Nigel solve a nifty little puzzle with masks in order to get in. There's Morgan behind the bar, of course. And right across the way is Rhys with Mr. Tibbs. (Rumor has it that Mr. Tibbs will be a real character in Blackenrock. I'm looking forward to that!) They are sitting by a marvelous fire:

Complete with burnable items. You did burn one, yes?

We get to see lots more of The Bear this time, including upstairs, with a nice little tease about rooms occupied by "The Boss." It's all prettied up with party flags and balloons and pumpkins!

Looks pretty much the same as before

Nanny Noah is plying her trade with some psychometry puzzles. We get five cards with portraits on them, and objects to match up with the cards. Here, clearly, we see that this little game is meant for Saxton veterans. Everybody in the cards, except two, is a character from The Lost Crown. Two are new, and I wonder if they're going to show up in the next game.

Do we know everybody here?

Station Master, once his door duties are done, moves in to run the Halloween Triathlon, which consists of three games that we can play as many times as we like. We have Pin the Tail on the Black Cat (just keep trying until you get it). We have Musical Statues, which I found kind of challenging, although I think I finally did win. But the major one is Guess the Ghost, which gets the ball rolling with our little adventure.

Of course, Guess the Ghost, in Nigel's case, turns out to be an actual ghost. With advice from Nanny and help from Lucy, Nigel must discover who the ghost might be and what happened to him. That mission is accomplished in several stages with one pretty good puzzle about identifying some herbs. Nigel will have encounters not only in Room 2, but out on the Harbor Wall, giving us some really good nighttime scenes of Saxton, with a full moon and drifting fog and splashing waves, all very nice effects.

Saxton Harbor. See Nigel on the wall?

So even though it's a small game it really is Saxton! 

There's even a little subplot involving Rhys, who gets into a spot of trouble. Don't worry--Mr. Tibbs remains safe throughout.

Quibbles, I have a few:

One thing I didn't like: you cannot examine anything in the inventory except your portable "case file" of ghostly encounters. I hope that will not be the case in the big game that's coming. Perhaps it would have required a more robust engine for this much shorter game, so it wasn't included. However, because of that I wasted abundant time trying to find an item needed early in the game. I had it, I just didn't realize it. 

(Ahem. Of course, I succumbed to my usual fault in adventuring: I get in my head the thing that I think ought to be the item, or where something should be, or how a puzzle should work, and I freeze my progress. Had I, in good adventuring fashion, just started clicking all of my items on the hot spot I would have found the right thing in no time. It was only by peeking at the official walkthrough--on the Midnight Horror link, above--and seeing the name of the item there that caused me to instantly realize what I already had.)

The game kind of fooled me with the "Halloween Triathlon." I kind of thought those were going to be the whole game! Silly me. But I bogged myself down in those for far too long, thinking that I had to win them to advance in the game. Finally I realized I could move around more than was instantly apparent, and that nudged me out of my frustration. (That, of course is not a quibble, but my own fault.)

And the games are winnable by the way. They can all be replayed ad infinitum, which I did at first. Ad infinitum.

I also quibble about the fact that Rhys, when we need to find him, might or might not, randomly, appear. On my first try he stayed hidden, and I traipsed to literally every possible area in the game trying to find him. I had cleared out the obstacle to finding him (there is one) long before. He stayed hidden the second time I went to his area, too. Once I looked at the WT he appeared, drat it.

Oh and um, maybe an obscurish in-game clue about the books and the multiple rums might have helped. Really, the reason for all those rums can't just be plucked out of the game. But hey, what's an adventure game without some frustration! It's supposed to tease, although too much frustration can ruin a game, so there's that. The WT saves us, but I hate having to use those (even though I often succumb).

But there it is! A real adventure game, just to tide us over while waiting for Blackenrock. And hey, this game is actually just about the same length as some of the newer games that have come out in the past few years, such as Serena (OK, that one's free) or Gone Home, or Dear Esther. True, you pretty much do have to have been to Saxton before to do the psychometry game and the real Guess the Ghost game, but I would expect that newbies could manage it just fine and perhaps become intrigued with the series.

Well! Anything that gets us back to Saxton is good by me! And this is a nifty little game, well done!

Have fun folks!

And thanks, Jonathan!

(And, I'm going to guess, "Blackenrock" has something to do with the mysterious, uncommunicative Dr. Black, whom we met on the Saxton shore. There must be a reason for him to have been there!)

Shades of Black 2: Triumph!

Well I had some good fun today, and finished the game quite nicely. I had thought that the in-game hint system was malfunctioning, but no! It turned out that it was giving me a clue to a puzzle that I had kind of bypassed. Didn't realize it was a puzzle. Once I realized that, I had no more trouble and was able to do the rest of the game on my own.

I'm not saying if I was right about the murderer. There are not a lot of options as to who it might be in this game, so I was either right, or I was wrong. Play the game yourself and find out.

We go to some very nice places in the last third of the game. We even go to a nice Swedish beach:

Looks like the ocean, but could be a large lake

We run across several puzzle boxes. Some have clues to find, others can be manipulated by trial and error pretty easily. Here's one:

You don't need a hint for this one. Really. Just poke around and observe.

I always enjoy seeing the way the other continent lives. Here's a kitchen that opens into a bedroom. These appear to be fairly small kitchens, mostly:

Small, but I could cook in this room.

There was a really nice many-layered puzzle in this game. You have to find four pieces that fit into a toy, and that leads you to another puzzle box, which leads to another puzzle. Of course, there are more puzzles for finding all four of those pieces. Really seriously fun! You feel as though you're making good progress. 

And of course, we get some lovely shots of local attractions, such as the "Sun Cannon," which fires when the sun ignites a certain point:

Lots of stuff to be found here!

Some of the local attractions look even better at night:

The leaning Water Tower nicely lit up

And, if you've never realized this, the lady who shows up as Carol's friend Stina, the one who runs all the different kiosks, actually is the lady who voices Carol!

Both Stina and Carol!

I think this may be one of the better Carol Reed games. It stays constantly interesting, has some really lovely photography, stays away from derelict factories this time (thankfully) and really does have some challenging but solvable puzzles. Plus, if you get frustrated, the in-game hint system is always there to nudge you in the right direction.

I'm ranking this one right up there with Time Stand Still. This is an excellent game!

Grab a copy from MDNA Games! (And, I just noticed that although I got this copy on Steam, the MDNA site says this game is also available for Mac! That's really a welcome change!)

This is a good, solid, fun adventure mystery point and click game.

Enjoy!

Carol Reed Shades of Black 1: Some Good fun

So! Jonathan Boakes released a surprise Halloween mini-game that takes place on Halloween and falls between The Lost Crown and the forthcoming (later this year!!) The Last Crown: Blackenrock. Natch I grabbed it on Steam for less than $5.00.

I got it installed with no problem and accessed the main screen. Thought I was good to go. That was two days ago. But now, when I want to play it on Halloween, it's a mess. It's eating up the disc space I have on my Fusion XP program. So I deleted it, because I can always reload when it's fixed. I also deleted my TWO copies of The Lost Crown, because I've got both of them too. Deleted more stuff that I have online. 

But I had bought this latest Carol Reed game when it came out, and I decided that if I couldn't play the Halloween game on Halloween, then I'd play this instead.

And it was a great choice!  

Of course it's a typical Carol Reed game, but what I like about these games is that while much of the game is pretty easyish, large parts of it require some thinking. And this time the in-game hint system isn't working too well (it's giving me a clue to a puzzle I haven't found yet--UPDATE: this turned out to be my own misunderstanding. The hint system works fine.). Fortunately, there is always the Gameboomers walkthrough. I've had to look at that a few times.

Mostly you get into trouble in these games by missing something. Often the hint system will tell you that, but that doesn't make the thing much easier to find. I traipsed back and forth looking for a bird house that just was not very visible. Finally had to go to the walkthrough to get a hint of where to look for it. At last I found it!

I've kinda zoomed through much of the game. It's pretty good at pointing you in the right direction, giving you a hint of where to go next. Of course, sometimes you have to backtrack. Right now I'm in the murderer's house, poking around, and I'm pretty firmly stuck. I've been playing for much of the day and enjoying myself quite nicely, but it's getting dark now so I think I'll do the rest of it tomorrow.

There are some really lovely shots in this game. Yeah, Nyqvist throws in a few derelict places (I really cannot imagine where he finds this stuff, all of which is photographed), but for the most part this is a really pretty game to look at.

For example:

A Nice View

A Night View from the Treehouse

And we go to various places, such as the Furniture Museum (are these places real??) with it's very impressive "sign":

Yes, it's about chairs

And we meet nice people, such as this nice lady who runs the motel with the underground room:

A very nice Swedish lady

Note that you also will meet another Swedish lady with a rather different agenda. Just sayin'.

And of course, you cannot have a Carol Reed game without Bigge:

He always has a little extra puzzle to solve

Or Jonas:

Not in the garden this time

So far the puzzles have been quite fun. My problem right now is that I'm missing a key somewhere. I will shamelessly go to the WT for that, because I play these games to enjoy them!! I manage to figure out a good 95% of the game. Although I will say that I do look forward to doing one without a hint someday, but not this time.

And I think I know who might be the true culprit in this game. I also think I know where the body might turn up.

But I figure that I'm a good four-fifths finished. I'm gonna watch some Doctor Who tonight, I think, and then I'll finish tomorrow.

After that it's back to Baldur's Gate! But fun with Carol for now!

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Baldur's Gate 38(b): Grinding Ankhegs

So. Because I want to keep the party I've got, and I just dual-classed Imoen into a Mage, I kinda did a baddish thing. Now, Imoen is my thief, and you really have to have a thief in this game. On the last play though I got Corin, whom I really liked, but this time he would take the place of Minsc, and I like Minsc even better (plus, Minsc is a sequel character). So I can't get Corin this time.

The problem is that until Imoen get up to Level SEVEN as a mage, her thief abilities will be inactive. That means I can't do the Cloakwood mines and certainly not Durlag's Tower, because you need trap finding abilities for those areas. (Maybe I could have left her behind at Cloakwood and grabbed Corin for just that area, but darn it, I want Imoen.

So I went back to the Ankheg hole and just ground 'em up until I got Imoen up to Mage Level Five. As an added bonus, I also got my protagonist, Emerald, up to Mage Level Five as well. And I got Ajantis up to Level Six as a fighter, and Viconia up to Level Six as a cleric.

As another little bonus, I got plenty of nice spells from the ankhegs, including another copy of Knock for Imoen! Plus lotsa jewels, which got up nearly 2,000 more coins. You can't sell the Ankheg shells at this point in the game, sadly, so I'll have to save up for Imoen's Magic Robes.

The only problem is that I left Minsc and Jahiera back at the Friendly Arms Inn while I did all this. (I needed Viconia to use her command spell on the ankhegs, and Ajantis disappeared when I tried to remove him from my party so I had to take him along too). Downsizing the party like that allowed me to get experience points much faster. The only problem is that now Minsc and especially Jahiera are a bit behind the rest of the party, but I'm not worried about Minsc, and Jahiera will catch up as we go through the game.

So it maybe was a little bit of cheating, but the game allows it, and darn it, I just want to finish the thing this time. I'm really not a very good player, so it's going to help me enormously to have two advanced mages at this stage.

Now I have to go through all the wilderness areas and get Imoen up to Level Seven so she can get her thief abilities back. After that, things ought to be much easier.

Could just grind ankhegs with the whole party and I will if I find that I have to do it, but let's just play the game again now!

(Off topic update: Jonathan Boakes released a little filler game in the Last Crown series for Halloween on Steam. I got it for less than $5, and I really do want to play that. It shouldn't take too long. It's supposed to take place between the Lost Crown and the next game in the series, the Last Crown: Blackenrock, which I fervently hope will be released before the end of the year, along with Bracken Tor!)

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Baldur's Gate 37(b): Movin' ON!

After an enforced vacation from the game to do massive amounts of Kirkus books and house repair, I have returned to my quest!

(Kinda had to get back to the game before I forgot how to play. Certainly my skills have deteriorated, but I will regain them!)

I did the Nashkell Mines, and found them to be a lead-pipe cinch. Easy peasy.

But Imoen hit Level 6, so it was time to dual class her into a mage. However, once you do that, her thief skills will be frozen for eternity (or at least for the rest of the game--I dunno what happens in the sequel). She has find traps at 100%, which is great. However, at first I thought I had put too much into open locks. She will, after all, have the knock spell to use, and I wanted her to be able to pick pockets too. But I read on a forum that picking pockets isn't all that necessary. True, I have found only one Potion of Master Thievery, but I know there are more to buy in the city of Baldur's Gate. So now she has open locks at 85%, and pick pockets at only 25%.

I was going to wait until she hit level seven, but even with that I could only have got pick pockets up to 50%. I might have gone back to when she was level five and reallocated the points, but that would require even more replay. Worse, she wouldn't get her thief skills back until she hit level eight as a mage, which would take me close to the end of the game.

So I decided to just jump in and dual class her as she is. Open locks 85%, find traps 100%, pick pockets 25%. The stealthy stuff I don't really know how to use anyway.

I'm going to be wandering around the wilderness areas, doing stuff just to get her mage levels up. But also I think I will head back to the Ankheg area with just Imoen, my main character (always "Emerald") and probably Viconia, leaving the others at the Friendly Arms Inn. I'll slay a buncha ankhegs, dividing the experience points between just those three, and that ought to boost Imoen up pretty quickly. I'll try it at first with just Imoen and Emerald, but I think I'm going to need Viconia's command spell, which really helped me last time. I won't be able to sell the ankheg shells, of course. I just need the experience points.

I had another difficulty. When I went to get the reward for my expedition to the Nashkell Mines, I got up to 19 level reputation and Viconia left. Permanently. I went onto some forums to see how to drop a few rep points, but nothing they suggested worked. So I wrote to Heaveron and he agreed that it was just best to kill somebody and drop nine points. I got one back already, but now I'm back at average reputation. I can spend some money in temples to boost it a bit, but I don't want to get it too high. I'm going to run into this problem again, and I really want to keep Viconia.

So I stole some money from a house and killed the guard who tried to arrest me. Big rep drop, but Viconia is content. 

I've got Imoen her sling and some bullets, and a quarterstaff. Not plus-one equipment, but no doubt I'll find some of that eventually. I got her a few spells, and we just had a nice sleep so she could memorize: one. She has one spell. No wizard's ring for her. Hope I find another one somewhere.

But I did dual class her the last time I played, and it was really handy having two mages. Plus now I have a real cleric and a druid. So that's four spellcasters. That's gonna help!

I have plenty more reading to do this week, but I really want to try to play just for a short period every day. I don't want to take off this much time from the game again. I have some other games I'd like to get to, but I really do want actually to finish Baldur's Gate for the first time. I came close the first time! This time will be better.

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