My interpretation of the cover art and blurb weren’t too far off for this short to medium length parser-based game. There isn’t too much I can say without entering spoiler territory, but I will remark on the long list of extensions employed in the game, including some written by the author. Some relate to the game’s most visible design element, a graphic pane for a game map, but most provide subtle functionality that gives the game a polite, polished feel.
Integrating graphics into an Inform game is not trivial, even with the extensions. Last year, I started looking into various options for graphics and found that a lot of the libraries that worked with earlier versions of Inform no longer worked with the most recent release, and that some were not being maintained. Compared to past years, I found multiple versions of some extensions and spent quite a while digging through revision histories and figuring out compatibilities, dependencies, etc., so I appreciate the effort that this author went through. The map in the game works well even when the interpreter windows is smushed, stretched, minimized, etc., and it updates smoothly when the characters change locations.
[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]
