Written by Morpheus Kitami Valhalla is another game like Twin Valley Kingdom in that it requires an absolute ton of mapping, which in its case, involves a lot of busywork. I'll explain when the next entry on that comes out, but for now, let's talk about the very mysterious Loremaster. Actually, it's not just me that's going to be talking about this, because Loremaster is another one of those weird RPG/adventure hybrids. Which means of course, that the CRPGAddict has so graciously agreed to do another collaboration with us, so his entry will be up today or sometime soon. I promise I'll finish ..read more

Written by Vetinari Alexandria is on the Nile, so the title is technically correct. Last time we were going to visit Bimbashi Cameron at the police station to check on our leads about the case which brought us here in Egypt. Cameron gives off the vibe of being a very strict and severe man, a classic by-the-book policeman. This is the one and only pleasantry which he exchanges with me. In an As You Know moment, Cameron explains the backstory which brought me here, i.e. the fact that a friend of mine was sold shares in a worthless company, and that I have managed to find out th ..read more

Written by Michael Back in the early years of graphic adventure gaming, there were many releases of games that were often no more than a disk and a paper in a plastic baggie on a spinner rack at the local computer shop.  There’s so many stories of the varied quality of these games.  That’s the history of the predecessor to Ultima and also the first release of Mystery House.   It’ll be fun to explore some of the games of that time.   My choice today was packaged a little better than that.  As best I can tell, it was a professionally-printed cardboard folder hol ..read more

Written by Zenic Reverie A small correction from my last post. The Rowan staff is used to kill the Will-o-wisps, while the zombies are damaged only by the silver sword. Also, I thought I had killed Andrei to gain a crystal, but when I loaded the game up he was still alive. I attempted to kill him and realized why I didn't save, the disease zombies give is devastating. It drains continuously increasing damage, isn't cured by the gypsy woman, and I haven't found a cure for it yet. I'm not sure where I gained that crystal, but Andrei has a diamond specifically. The machete I found b ..read more

Written by Joe Pranevich It was a bumpy ride and I took too many hints, but we have defeated Beyond Zork and can finally put it to rest. I am grateful to our community for the assistance! I was able to solve most of the rest of the game on my own, but as you will see, there were still a few places that caused me trouble. I ended the last post with Prince Foo of Pheebor’s helmet, finally retrieved from the far distant future with the help of our trusty time archway. We had to take a chocolate truffle, dip it into the Fountain of Youth, travel back in time to the battle where the princ ..read more

Written by Vetinari After the poppycocks of the game wiping out the file for my character just because he had been devoured by an abomination from outside of space and time, I proceeded to create another character and play all through the game again until the end. Not really. I just edited Sven's character file with Notepad by copying the values from one of the pre-generated characters. So, back to Blythburgh church. This time I choose to meditate, emptying myself of all conscious thoughts. And then... This is a pretty depressing ending. The Hound attacks, destroying the hom ..read more

Written by Vetinari Last time we were asked by Father Paul Mason to find out the nature of the beast that killed Matthew Talbot. A good place to search for that would be the Reading Room at the British Museum, but obviously without knowing the name of a book to retrieve, the library is almost useless. I do not know of any other source of knowledge (except for Marcus, who is characteristically close-mouthed about any topic of which I ask), so I am a little bit lost here. The list of verbs does not give any particular hint (I already tried searching almost everywhere I thought there could possi ..read more

by Michael At the end of this game, we will be rescuing a princess. Well, I have to take back some of my optimism about this game from the previous posts.  This last segment of the game made me feel as though I was constantly climbing ladders, dodging wine barrels being tossed my way. I’m going to leave out a lot of the deliberations that went into my actions.  A lot of the puzzle solving in this last section came down to pure luck or brute force inventory application.  Sometimes, I could see where I might have been given a hint, had I arrived at a different screen fir ..read more

by Will Moczarski The time has come for the final rating of the "cyberpunk vampire adventure game" BloodNet – or is it a cyberpunk vampire RPG? When I started reviewing this game back in fall 2022, I made two predictions: there’ll be more coincidental Muse lyrics than “time is running out” in my posts before I get to pen the final rating. And “exploring the far reaches of Cyberspace” will surely be a chore. Both of them were wrong. Cyberspace was alright (although there are some who will beg to differ), and I refrained from quoting Muse altogether as far as I'm aware. Before I try to ..read more

Written by Vetinari Next morning, I wake up to a surprise. The landlady, Mrs Bastable, announces that a visitor, a young lady, is waiting for me in the lounge. Now, I haven't mentioned anything about a landlady up to now, and I can hear what you're saying: of course there's a landlady, all sleuths (especially ones who live in London, and in Marylebone, no less) have a landlady. No! You are thinking of Victorian sleuths! Golden Age sleuths have no landladies, only secretaries! She's no Miss Lemon, but Nikki Porter comes a close second. Anyway, going to the lounge I find that this myst ..read more