I am giving it 8 out of 10. The writing is perfect, setting is perfect, dialogs are clever and fresh, intertextual references are amusing and welcome. Hinting through sidekick is nicely done.

Points go down for graphics and animation, which is really subpar, and for some obscure moments like the kiosk puzzle (bad).

I played it after Moebius and those two games are like heaven and hell. After finishing this, and after the good experience with the Blackwell four sequels, I preordered Blackwell Epiphany.

It's a rare thing, I never preorder these days, not with so many flops (RTW2), but Wadjet Eye deserves the money. The adventures these days are SO stale, and I am looking at you Moebius. Jane Jensen or not, that game was an abomination.

Thanks so much! I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier, and I'm very glad you enjoyed the game (and took the time to share your nice words with us).

I hope you enjoy Epiphany, about which I've heard very good things. You should also give Resonance a spin.

While it probably doesn't make sense to criticise someone's criticism (unless one is the subject of said criticism or a fanboy - and I am neither), I'm not sure it's fair to say the Kiosk puzzle was bad because you found it obscure. In my honest opinion it is quite logical, which is (incidentally) true of most puzzles in this game (possibly all - been a while since I played this).

The reason I mention this is that obscure puzzles - or puzzles for the sake of puzzles that don't tie into the "reality" of the environment - are a personal pet peeve of mine. I'm mainly thinking of those slider puzzles that alien civilisations (among others) supposedly use to lock their doors. I mean come on! But I digress...

Anyway - I guess mainly addressing the rest of this to Mark Y - this Kiosk puzzle was not one of those. Having said that, I must (ashamedly) admit to being somewhat stumped on this on my first run (somehow didn't get past the Haiku) - but to make up for it I instead managed to crack the tower code without using Primer (which i don't think is an option unless you have all pieces?) or without finding the Memorious fragment. OK so the "tower code" is technically a different puzzle (though it does somewhat encompass this one) - but that, I have to say (and I'm sure others have said this already) is a REALLY GOOD puzzle: you have multiple "avenues" to explore, you don't need all of them (but you get more "story" if you do), and if you can't crack it yourself (or you want the dialog) you can ask someone in-game (kind of). On top of that the tower puzzle (and it's component "piece" puzzles) was relatively well-integrated into the setting and plot (for the most part).

I realise I'm rambling now and I'm pretty sure someone else already mentioned this, but I think I visited Oswald's brother's head about three times before I could actually take it. I did this not because I ran out of options, but because I had long ago figured out that Oswald's brother's head might be important - albeit based on the assumption that a head that looked like/could be related to Oswald might help in advancing my case with Oswald himself (as opposed to the actual aim).

While I understand you not letting the player take certain objects until it "makes sense" plot-wise - and added to the fact that my assumption about where to use it was actually not correct - the very fact that I went back three times (or more) prior to being able to take it means that I knew[i/] it would be important somehow or somewhere (or become so) - and it's not like the game stops you from getting [i]all objects until they're relevant - just some of them. Having said that, implementing it the way you did Mark did likely save you some dialog/plot headaches while avoiding the often-occurring issue of solving a puzzle before you'd encountered it.

Anyway, apologies for the long babble - sometimes I just get going and won't shut up (or whatever the written equivalent of shutting up is when writing on a forum). It could have been worse - you could have touched on a topic that I actually have extremely strong views on... ;)

Thanks for the additional thoughts!

Regarding the kiosk puzzle, and its interaction with the Council Code puzzle, I have a few random thoughts to share.

First, in hindsight, I think there is a significant design flaw in how the Council Code, kiosk, and Primer bypass elements fit together. Generally speaking, where Primordia offers multiple puzzle solutions, they're supposed to be a "cerebral" solution (typically giving a better reward, in the form of an additional robot showing up at the end) and a "brute force" solution (typically leading to a negative reaction from a character). I always thought of the brute force solutions as "bypasses" of legitimate puzzles because something that is resolved through brute force (which in this context would mean, merely walking back and forth several times) is a "puzzle" at all.

There are lots of those bypasses in the game: you can bypass EFL with the glass finger; to some degree you can bypass Gamma by smashing the monitors recklessly; you can bypass Oswald & Cornelius with Clarity's help; you can skip the motor puzzle and shortchange Gimbal; you can use the decryption module on the bridge; you can have Primer crack the Council Code. (I may be forgetting a few others.)

The last one was meant as a bypass because it allows the player not to figure out how to assemble the fragments. The "brute force" required of the player is that he gather all three parts of the Council Code: in other words, a skillful player needn't run down on the parts.

There are a few problems with that, though. The main one is that one of the three parts (the one you get from Memento Moribuilt) actually requires a similar kind of puzzle-solving to the Council Code itself. It's not quite the same, but both of them require patience and both of them are non-inventory puzzles. So players who are unable to solve the Council Code are unlikely to be able to solve the kiosk. Thus, if anything, solving the Council Code becomes a bypass for the kiosk, which seems quite backwards.

In hindsight, what I should have done is enable Primer to crack the code with two fragments, but require quite a bit more "grinding" from the player in order to get him to do so. Of course, then even fewer players would have solved the kiosk. Oh well!

Second, the in-game rationale for the kiosk puzzle is that it's a species of CAPTCHA designed by Memorious to insure that the person who finds Memento is curious and clever, qualities that Memorious believed would cause the finder to be interested in data preservation rather than data corruption. In other words, the puzzle is meant to keep out MetroMind and her ilk, and draw in people Horatio and others like him.

Regarding Laurence's head, I agree that the approach of not letting the player take an item until Horatio has a reason to do so is fairly inelegant, and becomes lame when the player gets ahead of Horatio, as it sounds like you did here. I had thought that no one would want the head until they found out about Laurence, but clearly I was wrong!

You can do what with the glass finger now?! I didn't even know it was actually possible to find something to trade for it, figuring it kind of a joke/red-herring item. I knew there was still something I was missing!

BTW although I like the idea you can bypass the bridge with the encryption module, I didn't actually know this was possible until after I'd completed the game and saw it mentioned. Mainly because Primer and the other soldier-bot at the courthouse gave me enough clues it wasn't too hard to figure out, but also because I wouldn't have figured out how to actually do it (without clicking on everything) since Crispin has to go over there to use the keypad. I pretty much agree with your assessment, though like I said I found solving the council code easier than solving the Kiosk. Although both logic puzzles, one is number-oriented and one is more... I was going to say "word-oriented", but I guess it does have a substitution cipher in it which is kind of both.

Slightly different skill sets, but I still agree with your point overall - especially with respect to getting primer to do it with less than a complete set of fragments - or better still, have Primer still require all the elements but provide a way to brute-force the Kiosk (e.g. via some "device" you can trade or find).

BTW did you find it common among other players that they found cracking the code itself easier than the Kiosk component? I figured it was just me. Makes sense to me - pretty much what I had figured, which is one of the reasons I liked this and other puzzles in the game - it had some logic behind it other than "here's a puzzle". It's akin to DaVinci putting subversive anti-Church things into his work, except it's possible to "solve" in order to get a direct explanation. Well yeah, since I thought I could use it to do something with Oswald. I didn't have an idea what - maybe freak him out or something? :)

That and I thought I could grab some memory fragments from what's left of his head like you do with Charity. It would have been kind of cool to be able to use that device in multiple places, even just for flavor... ;)

But you do have to use it on his head to get the code for summoning Factor!

Oh yeah that's right - what you extract is a series of numbers repeating right? Doh! Shows how long it's been since I played the game if I can't even remember that.

THAT was probably why I tried to get the head in the first place. I also tried to use that device on other robots, but naturally if they're still active they won't take kindly to you attempting to "read their minds" as it were - so figured a dead Factor-built would contain the info. By which I mean, I originally figured I could get parts of the council code from the head, similar to what we did with Charity (and if I now remember it correctly, that was Horatio's first intention too - but he gets the repeating code which leads to Factor (or his aid anyway) which then leads to the code).

Now that I remember it, the whole reason I wanted his head in the first place (or at least, attempt to extract stuff from it without taking it, which I also couldn't do) was the above. Sorry for the confusion there, but now that I remember it THAT was why I was ahead of where the game expected my thinking to be, and why I thought it didn't really make sense to not let the player do that.

I loved the kiosk puzzle, it reminded me of playing an ARG.

You were too smart! :)

Originally, there were going to be additional uses for the reader -- Clarity's head and Crispin's matrix -- but I decided it was out of character for Horatio to go prying. It did annoy me not to have more uses for that (same with the decryption module). When you give the player a fun toy, there should be lots of places to play with it!