#Handsome McStranger

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Hawkstone by Handsome McStranger

============= Links

Play the game (IFComp) See other reviews of the game

============= Synopsis

Hawkstone: A retro TRS-80 adventure with extras for modern day adventurers. Combining old school text adventures with RPG elements, opening up a deeper world of discovery options and choices for the player. Hawkstone has traditional puzzles to solve with new twists, comedy, and an underlying fantasy story with secrets to discover.

============= Other Info

Hawkstone was made in a custom engine, submitted to the 2023 Edition of the IFComp. It is only available on Windows, working best with Win8 or Win10.

Status: Completed Genre: Adventure

CW: -/ your retro adventure content

============= Playthrough

Played: 9-Oct-2023 Playtime: about 2h (with loading up the game, half abandoned) Rating: - [IFComp vote] Thoughts: Run around in circles... literally.

============= Review

Hawkstone is a retro-type parser adventure, using old-school RPG elements to drive the puzzles, and a Scott Adam-style of gameplay (not all locations are listed in the directions and puzzles can be obtuse). The game includes a walkthrough listing the required commands and order of actions*, and a built-in help system (pay in-game currency to get it). *I messed up wanting to go my own way and skipped some steps

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

To say this was not the kind of game I am good at is an understatement. It combines a confusing worldmap (with weird locations) and difficult to almost impossible puzzles (hit the wrong butterfly and meet an early end). I did try to give it my best shot, but after finding myself stuck, I exclusively followed the walkthrough - save for not wanting to drop loot (but that's me playing RPG).

So Hawkstone is essentially an RPG exploration game. You get items, break some stuff, give stuff to people, maybe sell some items maybe buy some, attack harmless butterfly, and go round and round you go around the map. Do some actions and maybe level up and your skills, or get a random dice roll for extra stats. If you finish enough puzzles, you get to the end (I didn't).

There's not much direction given to you (aside from the start text telling you in case of stuck, look at stuff) and you have to rely on guess work (or just be like me and follow the walkthrough) and thinking of silly ways to solve things. The combat system is pretty fun (though it would be nice if there had been more opportunities to use it), and the game as a swanky stat/inventory system. There is quite a bit of humour in the text, especially in the reaction of actions, and if you manage to run the game without any glitches, it's pretty cool looking too!

But darn, you need to be a level 9999 experienced parser to do this adventure on your own... even a sword is not enough.