Epigraph Reviews

need more ancient civilization exploration games man

It lacks any quality of life that'd make this fun (e.g. a dictionary like in Chants of Sennaar or even [spoiler]a way to fill in the alphabet once you understand it.[/spoiler]).

Well I got to the end of the game. It took an educated (ie lucky) guess for one of the solutions to the puzzle box, and I'm still not quite sure what several of the words mean. Overall this is a fun experience, [b]IF[/b] this is the sort of thing you're into. There are some Eureka moments as things suddenly fit together, so once you get a foothold into the puzzle it feels good, but before you get that foothold it's frustrating - I walked away after 30 minutes in but came back after it occurred to me the fictional culture is implied to have a real world location and I tried again with that in mind. It made all the difference. There are some quality of life issues: the game seems very dark to me and the text both on the artifacts and the letter are slightly too small to be comfortable (it doesn't help that the letter is in a cursive-style font - not great when the words are barely 2mm tall). Some of the artifacts you can't quite zoom in far enough to read them comfortably, and not being able to pan sideways to look at them feels a bit off. If you're able to play in a dark room and have a big enough screen then you'll manage, but it's worth being aware of. I rate this: it gave me a headache/10

"Epigraph" is less of a video game, and more of a puzzle handed to you in video game form. You'll likely spend as much (or more) time huddled over a sheet of paper than actually looking at the screen. It is a very well-designed puzzle, though. The author manages a marvelous balancing act - giving you [i]just[/i] enough hints that solving the final puzzle is [i]just[/i] about possible, and trusting you to do the rest on your own. It's not 100% realistic, but it reflects well the real-life translation of unknown languages. I loved that one of the final puzzles requires you to [spoiler]just plain [i]guess[/i] how a certain word might be plausibly spelled, with the only hint being a similar word from a related language[/spoiler]. And I like that [spoiler]even by the end of the game, there are still words you won't be 100% sure about[/spoiler].

This game made me feel like an actual linguist. I did end up using a hints guide for certain parts of the game. I wish I could wipe this from my brain so that I could start it from scratch again.

underrated, seems impossible from the start if language nerd, buy instantly

really fun. makes you feel like a genius lol ngl if you speak/are familiar with more than one language irl, it probably makes solving for the symbols faster. still getting stuck on the words though, will be back later to update