Hadean Lands

Fantastic and very difficult. 9 hours in and had some trouble so i looked up a guide. big brain teaser

It's a very clever text adventure game, in the old school style, but with some nice conveniences added.

A fun logic puzzle, if a bit obtuse at times

Hadean Lands is concerned with a situation rather than with a story, and this isn't a put down. Many well-loved movies dramatize situations--Dog Day Afternoon is a familiar example. In this game's case, a disaster of some kind has befallen a ship belonging to a sort of navy of alchemists. The protagonist is concerned with surviving the incident and, perhaps, repairing the damage. The core loop of the game consists of performing rituals of alchemy. Alchemy is apparently central to the navy's operation and you, an ensign with presumably limited training, must accumulate recipes and ingredients in order to open doors and containers that house still more recipes and agreement. On paper, it sounds a bit like Enchanter, but the reality is quite different. Hadean Lands has a complex and incredibly well-implemented system of Alchemy. Most steps of an alchemical recipe (there are always multiple steps) have their own rich, evocative descriptions. Given the number of recipes available, these descriptions reflect the remarkable care with which the game treats matters both great and small. Tracking recipes and ingredients poses a significant information management problem, and Hadean Lands graciously takes on a significant portion of that burden. Once an area has been discovered, you can return to it immediately with a GO TO [ROOM] command. If alchemical processes are required to reach the room, the game will automatically perform them. It is also possible to GO TO [ITEM]. The game maintains a list of discovered rituals, facts, and formulas that the player can recall with a command. All of those features make it possible to RESET the game world in order to use different ingreadients or solve problems in different ways. A player can even skip certain problems because they have already found the rituals that are beyond them. Most remarkably, the game tracks doors and containers that the player has yet to open. Still, this is a massive game, and I found myself managing quite a bit of information on my own. There are just so many data and items to keep track of that the lists of things that can be recalled are massive by game's end. I argue that information management is one of the key challenges to meet in the late/endgame. The endgame is very hard. I don't want to spoil any puzzles, so I will just say that I had a hard time reaching the end. However, despite my troubles, the puzzles were logical and fair. So far as the ending goes: I think it assumes (reasonably) that a certain amount of attention will be paid to sights and events that have no direct effect on the main storyline (incident line?). I was so focused on the core gameplay loop that I think I must have missed out on these opportunities. The system of Alchemy is novel, well-authored. and impressively realized. Those who enjoy it--and I suspect many will--will find in Hadean Lands an immensely satisfying and challenging experience. I believe this game reflects the current state of the art for Interactive Fiction, and, as such, is an *important* game for people who follow the genre to experience.

An instant classic from one of the great visionaries in the field. Without spoiling too much, the most mind-boggling part of the game has to be the implementation. I can only imagine how complicated the autocomplete system (for lack of a better term) was to implement. Because of how this works, the puzzles become stacked on top of each other in complex chains of alchemical dependency graphs. Really unique, the closest I've seen to it is the IF *Endless, Nameless*, but the implementation here is seamless, whereas there the user had to explicitly record sequences of actions and stop recording. The story is a bit undercooked IMO, which is a shame because the story that *is* there is pretty intriguing. But the puzzles and general IF experience are top of the line. If you've played any of Zarf's games before, you'll recognize the mix of brutal mind-bending puzzles, well-written ambiance, and a story you have to piece together on your own. Highly recommended.

Good alchemy

great stuff.

Very atmospheric text adventure where the main game mechanics describes the fictional universe. Complex, satisfying puzzles and very user friendly.

This interactive fiction is a very fun, puzzle-oriented experience. It features an interesting mechanic that allows you to restart from the beginning while retaining your knowledge about the world and its formulas. Additionally, you can perform many familiar actions with just one or two commands, avoiding the tedium of repeating the same tasks. The only downside is that it doesn't provide enough explanation from a story perspective, and the ending felt a bit disappointing and confusing to me. Despite this, it is still highly recommended, especially if you enjoy puzzle-fests like Curses, Jigsaw, So Far, The Mulldoon Legacy, and others.

It took me 4 years and 3 restarts to make my way through this game. The first section is brutal in the sheer quantity of concepts and text descriptions it throws at you, none of which adds up anything particularly satisfying in terms of puzzle solving. You spend the first hour or two of the game entering long ritual commands, mostly by rote, then spend many more hours walking around picking up and digesting lengthy ritual descriptions. I did not enjoy this part of the game at all, and if this game did not have such a glowing reputation, I probably would have written it off and never come back to it. However, once I had gotten over that first hump, read through all the notes and worked out which sections of the game need ‘solving’, the game became a lot more compelling. In fact, this game has taken up most of my free time for a couple of weeks now. Once you have fully digested the alchemy system and start chaining rituals it really is quite addictive, and a much stronger core mechanic than what most other adventure games offer. Not all the puzzles are great but a higher than usual number are complex and satisfying. The setting also becomes a lot more compelling the further you get in, with some of the final rituals making for a suitably climactic ending to the game. The story comes across as an afterthought but there are eventually a few items of interest there as well. Overall, I do think most fans of the genre will get a lot out of playing this game. There is a lot to like here, and there are some interface and design elements that I think could be used to improve practically any text adventure. But be forewarned that the game expects a lot from your attention span immediately and takes a little while to start paying off. I did buy the “I will not check a walkthrough” certificate but did not follow it. There was a half dozen or so puzzles I doubt I would have ever worked out by myself. My hat goes off to anyone who did.