Playing Games

Okay, that was short. There's a token attempt at providing some sort of story about a secret society of boardgamers -- who are no doubt trying to take over the world one dice-roll at a time -- and the initial puzzle with the pocket-watch is not bad. But after that, the story disappears: it turns out that it is essentially a framing device for the remaining puzzles. These puzzles don't really make a huge amount of sense ... in a way, they were really a bunch of mazes that needed to be mapped via trial-and-error.

I will say that the subversion of the cardinal direction movements to the maze board was neatly done. So seamless was it that it never occurred to me until this writing that something unusual had been done there. However, one wonders if this being told that a stone moves or does not move in some direction is all that much different from being told that "you" move or are unable to move in that same direction. That is, are we more forgiving when we are moving a stone across a blind maze than when we are moving the protagonist across the same, and to what extent? Mazes these days are not in the community's good graces, after all.

So, in the end, the whole was competently assembled, and the writing was adequate, but I found the overall game somewhat lacking in the story department.

Three slices of perfectly toasted twelve-grain bread, with butter, and a tall glass of milk.