Hadean Lands and Brief Update
I finally finished the text adventure, Hadean Lands. That was a long long haul. Story goes that you're playing as an ensign studying at this Marcher. I don't know what that is except I guess it's similar to a magical university that teaches you alchemy. And that's exactly what you're doing. A whole lot of alchemical formulas. The problem is something's gone horribly wrong in the Marcher. Stuff is broken, fractures have opened up to different worlds, fires and flooding, ect. It's up to you to attempt to fix things and figure out what happened. The problem is you're limited in your knowledge, so you're going to have to explore, finding notes to formulas and rituals, which you will have to perform to make any sort of progress.
Now, this being a text adventure this makes things take longer when you have to type everything in. There are shortcuts of course, for example, typing "s" to go south, or "x" to look at something. But it's also possible to screw up and lose your ingredients if you're not paying close of enough attention to the instructions, in which case you have to "reset." The game sends you into the void and you're back to where you started again. You may think that means you have to do everything over again, but in fact the game is kind to you in that you still retain all the knowledge you gained, and as a bonus if you're looking for say a specific item, you can type "find x", x being the item of course and the game will automatically perform any actions you needed to do to obtain that item, which is a huge time saver. You're supposed to reset the game from time to time anyway because there are some tasks you can't complete without doing so. There's also a map of the place you can use to jump from place to place. I didn't realize that until after a few play sessions. It becomes extremely useful for getting around. The majority of the game's puzzles involve performing alchemical rituals to get past barriers and paying close attention to how they are performed so you don't screw up. There were only a couple other different puzzles like getting safe combinations. Eventually the rituals get slightly more complicated and you have to modify a few of them. Up to a certain point I decided to just follow along with a walkthrough because I wasn't exactly sure what certain rituals did and what I was trying to accomplish. The game uses a lot of complex and somewhat cryptic language, but you usually get a general idea of what they're talking about. When I did perform the rituals, I got a sense of satisfaction, so I enjoyed playing the game. It is undeniably tedious though being a text adventure. If you don't like doing a lot of typing, you may not like this. It's a slow burn. As my first completed text adventure, it was a pretty fun one though. It's really well constructed and thought out. I'm impressed by how someone thought all this up. I did think the ending was rather abrupt though, which left a few unanswered questions. I played this game on my phone, which worked out well this time.
As for a screenshot, it's a little redundant isn't it? Because it's all text lol. But here is one anyway. It's a bit small, but it shows the text, verbiage, and the map.
Next up I'm going back to traditional point-and-click with Guard Duty. It's a retro style comedy set in medieval times. I'm liking it so far.
And lastly of course my mom is now in Ohio. She arrived yesterday night. She comes back next Sunday. My dad's still here and my brother, but my dad's going on another business trip to Florida on Monday. So we'll be alone. I think I've got plenty of food for myself though. I don't know if I can say the same for my brother. Going to be a long week and a half, but as always Grammy will be entertaining me. She's coming over tomorrow and we'll have lunch together and then go to her special "refinery" place (I'll finally get to see what this is :P) to play some ping pong and pool. I'm going to have to go through this again though because then on the 29th both of my parents leave for Idaho and come back on the 7th. Then shortly after that we go on our cruise to Mexico from the 12th to the 15th of September. So, as you can see, this is going to be a crazy month or two. BTW, the reason my mom went back to Ohio (not that she needed a reason) is for my cousin's wedding.
But speaking of my brother. He's now said he's definitely planning on moving back in with Kourtnei. Great. >_> He plans on doing that once he gets a new car. I don't know how he can stand it there with all the animals and well I guess maybe her room is bigger than his, and I guess her mom doesn't mind. Weird. Kourtnei might just end up bleeding my brother dry again because he never learns. I mean she already took his portable AC from him. The reason he needed that here is because our AC doesn't cool down the house equally. Meaning some rooms are hotter, some rooms colder. But now since he doesn't have his AC, he blasts the air here because his room gets too hot. Unfortunately that means he's freezing me out by doing that. So I guess I won't have to be bothered by that anymore once he leaves, and really it's only been since this summer started he started doing that. And I won't have to worry about him eating my food either. There are upsides to this. My brother's completely crazy and probably a masochist, but I can't say I'd complain too much about him being gone again. Maybe I'll sleep better too and feel more secure in my privacy. It won't surprise me though if he realizes Kourtnei's driving him nuts again and he comes crawling back here. But so far they've been getting along I guess. My brother just makes terrible choices when it comes to relationships. But I think I'll get off this subject now.
Next post I guess if it isn't about Guard Duty, will probably be about the things I did with Grammy.
Now, this being a text adventure this makes things take longer when you have to type everything in. There are shortcuts of course, for example, typing "s" to go south, or "x" to look at something. But it's also possible to screw up and lose your ingredients if you're not paying close of enough attention to the instructions, in which case you have to "reset." The game sends you into the void and you're back to where you started again. You may think that means you have to do everything over again, but in fact the game is kind to you in that you still retain all the knowledge you gained, and as a bonus if you're looking for say a specific item, you can type "find x", x being the item of course and the game will automatically perform any actions you needed to do to obtain that item, which is a huge time saver. You're supposed to reset the game from time to time anyway because there are some tasks you can't complete without doing so. There's also a map of the place you can use to jump from place to place. I didn't realize that until after a few play sessions. It becomes extremely useful for getting around. The majority of the game's puzzles involve performing alchemical rituals to get past barriers and paying close attention to how they are performed so you don't screw up. There were only a couple other different puzzles like getting safe combinations. Eventually the rituals get slightly more complicated and you have to modify a few of them. Up to a certain point I decided to just follow along with a walkthrough because I wasn't exactly sure what certain rituals did and what I was trying to accomplish. The game uses a lot of complex and somewhat cryptic language, but you usually get a general idea of what they're talking about. When I did perform the rituals, I got a sense of satisfaction, so I enjoyed playing the game. It is undeniably tedious though being a text adventure. If you don't like doing a lot of typing, you may not like this. It's a slow burn. As my first completed text adventure, it was a pretty fun one though. It's really well constructed and thought out. I'm impressed by how someone thought all this up. I did think the ending was rather abrupt though, which left a few unanswered questions. I played this game on my phone, which worked out well this time.
As for a screenshot, it's a little redundant isn't it? Because it's all text lol. But here is one anyway. It's a bit small, but it shows the text, verbiage, and the map.
Next up I'm going back to traditional point-and-click with Guard Duty. It's a retro style comedy set in medieval times. I'm liking it so far.
And lastly of course my mom is now in Ohio. She arrived yesterday night. She comes back next Sunday. My dad's still here and my brother, but my dad's going on another business trip to Florida on Monday. So we'll be alone. I think I've got plenty of food for myself though. I don't know if I can say the same for my brother. Going to be a long week and a half, but as always Grammy will be entertaining me. She's coming over tomorrow and we'll have lunch together and then go to her special "refinery" place (I'll finally get to see what this is :P) to play some ping pong and pool. I'm going to have to go through this again though because then on the 29th both of my parents leave for Idaho and come back on the 7th. Then shortly after that we go on our cruise to Mexico from the 12th to the 15th of September. So, as you can see, this is going to be a crazy month or two. BTW, the reason my mom went back to Ohio (not that she needed a reason) is for my cousin's wedding.
But speaking of my brother. He's now said he's definitely planning on moving back in with Kourtnei. Great. >_> He plans on doing that once he gets a new car. I don't know how he can stand it there with all the animals and well I guess maybe her room is bigger than his, and I guess her mom doesn't mind. Weird. Kourtnei might just end up bleeding my brother dry again because he never learns. I mean she already took his portable AC from him. The reason he needed that here is because our AC doesn't cool down the house equally. Meaning some rooms are hotter, some rooms colder. But now since he doesn't have his AC, he blasts the air here because his room gets too hot. Unfortunately that means he's freezing me out by doing that. So I guess I won't have to be bothered by that anymore once he leaves, and really it's only been since this summer started he started doing that. And I won't have to worry about him eating my food either. There are upsides to this. My brother's completely crazy and probably a masochist, but I can't say I'd complain too much about him being gone again. Maybe I'll sleep better too and feel more secure in my privacy. It won't surprise me though if he realizes Kourtnei's driving him nuts again and he comes crawling back here. But so far they've been getting along I guess. My brother just makes terrible choices when it comes to relationships. But I think I'll get off this subject now.
Next post I guess if it isn't about Guard Duty, will probably be about the things I did with Grammy.