Thaumistry: In Charm's Way

Thaumistry is a great little text adventure. I haven't played one of these seriously in over 25 years. My memories are of mysterious wide worlds, reams of scribbled maps that loop back on themselves and being stuck for weeks or months trying to get through stubborn doors. The good news is that Thaumistry keeps the fun bits of the genre - the humor, the easter eggs, the hints of a bigger story going on behind the scenes - and take away some of the most frustrating bits like needing to make your own map or notes. You can always get a mild hint by typing "recap" to figure out the places you've been and the puzzles you forgot you didn't solve yet, and that was all i needed to get through the game without any walkthrough or more direct hints. Thaumistry is a fine game, whimsical and fast-paced and sprinkled with odd little in-jokes and trivia. It doesn't tell a really deep or serious story, but that's okay. It's fun. if you played text adventures as a kid and were a bit intimidated by getting back into them now, this is a great way - buy it on Steam, double-click, off you go. Well worth it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Thaumistry: In Charm's Way. It reminded me of when I was a teenager and played Infocom's text adventures. The game was developed by an Infocom veteran - Bob Bates. A very well thought out and cleverly designed game for anyone who enjoys text adventures.

Fantastic game. Well-written and well-crafted. Thank you, Bob Bates!

A well written, funny and very accessible interactive fiction (text adventure). It therefore possesses a very good flow for the genre.

An enjoyable story, with puzzles of the right difficulty, making me feel like I'm smarter than I am while guiding me along.

What a cool game! And what a crazy trailer too. They've got Al Lowe, Tim Schafer, and Steve Meretzky...in the trailer, not all involved with the game, haha. But if you read those names and you imagine a certain type of humor, then you're pretty close to what to expect with Thaumistry. It's a modern-day fantasy style game, and casting spells is an essential part of solving a lot of the puzzles. Think LOOM but in a modern setting and you're an inventor rather than a weird little cloak guy and there's no graphics and also you don't have to play music to cast spells... Ok, maybe I just wanted you to think about LOOM, isn't that a neat game? This one is definitely worth playing for the humor and the footnotes (yes, footnotes, with external links and everything)! The price is definitely right for the amount of gameplay you have here - by which I mean it's really cheap! Give it a try.

Only the second text adventure I ever played, but I enjoyed every minute of it (first playthrough was outside of Steam, so please disregard my playtime). The game has a funny and interesting story, excellent writing as well as logical puzzles. It is way worth the asking price, actually almost too cheap if you ask me (only 3,29 EUR at the time of this review). Thank you Bob for this wonderful experience. I hope there is more to come in the future!

I played only a few text adventures (aka interactive fiction games) before to completion, because either the interface annoyed me or the story couldn't keep me interested, but Thaumistry was different: I enjoyed the story a lot, the forgiving parser combined with the map and hint system never left me stuck and I finished the game in one playthrough within two days. I really hope Bob continues to make these type of games, as reading and imagining the written depictions can sometimes be as (or even more) entertaining as seeing them in computer graphics.

It's fun, not too hard and doesn't take too long to play. It feels just right and has all the right touches. Playing this took me back to the 8-bit days. Thanks!

Nice work! Loved stepping into a story like I did a long time ago. I would love to see more of this stuff!