The Temple of Shorgil is a puzzly (someone said “oldstyle”: let me oppose that later on*) game that’s just a single puzzle with a few diverging mechanics as long as the game proceeds, growing in difficulty up to the point where it lost me completely.
First things first: the mechanic is clean and clever. You have to PUT or TAKE statuettes to and from pedestals to unlock doors and procede into the maze and into the game itself. The complications of it start soon to become evident as the number of figurines grows.
Fortunately, this doesn’t resolve in impossibile mathematical nightmares but tends, on the contrary, to change to different tricks.
The last 2 puzzles were very hard, in my opinion, the first one being awesome and – for my experience – the second one being impossibile. I confess I retired** to the walkthrough a bit too much (it’s always like this, during the Comp: you like a game and want to see it finished even when you have all time in the world to solve it) and, while I slapped my face when I got the solution to the second-to-last, I never understood how the last one worked. It looked arbitrary and casual and that ruined the experience a bit for me.
Given how all of the previous puzzles were egregiously clued (just look and understand all of the plaques you find), I’m about to suppose the last one was somehow clued the same, but I really couldn’t find how.
There’s no plaque to read, and when I got that I had to put a “random” number of figurines in unrelated rooms (except to the fact they are tagged as “metal rooms”) I felt betrayed. Other players or, maybe, the author himself: what did I miss?
This is why I hate walkthroughs: they are just the can of chocolate left there in display for a diabetic. You shouldn’t use them but… well.
Being this a puzzlefest, the ending could have been more plain – while it still gives space to some laugh and fun.
My score:
Nice voice (although very very gaunt, given the kind of game where much of it sounds procedurally generated).
Nice add-ons (the maps are marvelous and really the game-making affair: (*) this is one of the things that make me oppose the thought that this is an oldstyle game – man, back in the oldstyle days you had to BUY a DAMN MAP in a RL shop!)
Clever puzzle(s).
An unfortunate last puzzle.
For the times we are currently living in, I’d say: 8/10.
I will probably change my mind after I’ve played other games in this Comp. Or when someone has told me how could I ever understand the last puzzle by myself, proving (as usual) that I’m a dumb man.
- Ok, being it this kind of game, it IS probably oldstyle. But in the good way, at least.
** Retired, yes. Cause when I start using WTs, the game is usually over, for me. As the fun. Banish WTs forever!