The Abbey Reviews

I bought this game at 75% off. There were a lot of mixed reviews but I thought I'd try it anyway. I liked it. It's much like other point and click games. The story was interesting, the graphics were good and it wasn't short. Without giving away anything, the only thing I was disappointed about was that someone else in the game that deserved justice, didn't get it. It's a fun game if you like point and clicks. I'd recommend giving it a try if it's on sale.

pros + well drawn hand-painted background graphics + story based on The Name of the Rose and it's quite intriguing. you're investigating some murders in abbey + there are some nice orchestral musics + generally good quality voice acting + interesting side characters + well made cinematics + there is a map for fast travel but interestingly you can't use nighttime + well written dialogues cons - slow paced - few puzzles, with little variety or challenge - characters can't run and slowly walk everywhere - game buggy. i couldn't finish game because of a inventory bug. - there is no auto save - there are no steam achievements - there are no cards - lack of a button which shows hotspots causes pixel hunting After 2.5 hours of playing without save, game is frozen. i had to stop game's exe with task manager and i lost my all progress. despite intriguing storyline, lack of fun puzzles and slow pace make this game tedious. i really don't want to play again same parts. therefore i give thumbs down for this game.

Visuals, story, characters and voice acting are all very good, game is certanly memorable in that regard, but two fings are stopping me from recomending it: 1. Missing assets bug, game will crash at certain spots and you will be forced to manualy rename incorrectly named files. 2. Puzzles are mostly fine, but often they are solved by visiting all locations to see if something changed since your last visit or talking to all characters for new dialog option. It becomes tedious realy fast (especialy if you now game can crash on you at any point and force you to repeat all that one again) My advice: if you are interested in this game - just watch a walkthrough on youtube, you'll get everything that's good about this game and save yourself a lot of frustration

8/10 I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE: I personally have not dealt with ANY bugs regarding this game. While I haven't finished the game yet (ignore the 43.6 hours played - my fault for leaving the game running over night, so far I've played maybe 10-15 hours), I wanted to throw in my two cents before the end of the Holiday Sale. Personally I think the $1.99 is a steal. Basic point and click game where you move back and forth between areas of the abbey finding objects and utilizing them to achieve results. The main character, Leonardo, is very similar to the Sherlock Holmes persona in his deductive reasoning methods, logic, and personality, but in this case he is a monk with a... let's say "naïve" boy for a side-kick. So far, with a few exceptions, the puzzles mostly involve finding hidden objects and using those objects to overcome obstacles. I really enjoyed that almost all of the object locations/ solutions to problems involved basic logic - when a solution I tried didn't work, I was almost always VERY close to the actual solution. Most likely, what you think will be on the right track, you'll just have to push your thinking a little bit further. The controls took me a moment to figure out but are basic and make moving through the different areas smooth. The art is an interesting mix of 3D and 2D (but strongly reminds me of cartoons I watched in the 90's). In terms of finding the hidden objects - I will admit to using a guide in several spots, but frankly, if you think you are in the right location to find something, you probably are - you really do have to pay attention to your environment to keep from missing the little details. Also, just a tip: keep your sidekick in mind. He's not the brightest crayon, but he's not just a decorative purse-puppy either. That being said, I must disagree with some of the negative comments. I know nothing of the original story this game is based off of, but coming from a religious background and some experience in medieval history, I would say to keep in mind that: 1) this is a fictional (as far as I'm aware anyway) story - the characters are very blunt/cliché personalities, as is very common in kids' stories. 2) There are a lot of unsavory religious figures/beliefs throughout history that this does mirror. No, as far as I've seen it does not emphasize any inspiring religious feats, but I don't believe that this game was intended to to supplement the player's religious beliefs - it is through and through, a STORY of murder, greed, and corruption. I actually enjoyed many of the historical references and believe the creators did a fair share of research regarding the content. The voice acting is well done and while the animations are fairly basic, they are placed to make the story feel like genuine interactions and the camera angles top off the whole "movie vibe." The premise of the story is common enough but the environment is unique and characters are fun to interact with. As it's my first playthrough I can't say much for how your responses the conversations impact the story- you do get to question characters and choose your responses, but I've noticed in several conversations that Leonardo will address all of your "optional" responses at some point, despite which selections you choose. While it probably does deserve the whole $19.99, I am a cheapskate and probably wouldn't recommend spending more than $8.

A decent core story is buried under ragged delivery, questionably cartoonish presentation, technical flaws and god awful sliding tile puzzle. The Abbey finds a way to break the immersion almost every time you finally manage to start enjoying yourself. First challenge arises even before the opening cinematic, for most simply starting a game will be an adventure of its own. Steam doesn't recognize unique spanish letters so you'll have to endure errors and crashes to find out just what files you have to edit and how. The visuals are good enough (though sadly not as good as the screenshots imply, in motion 3D-models are a lot less pleasant to look at) with backgrounds being one of the stronger points of the game. Still, during the vital moments the cartoony style seems like an odd stylistic choice, conflicting with the seriousness of murder and religious rituals, destroying the atmosphere that could have been with a more fitting approach. In the game itself most things exist to irritate you: from the astoundingly low position of the subtitles and MC's frustratingly slow movements to the existence of Bruno. On the bright side, dialogue and voice acting are mostly passable (except, well, the good old Bruno, one of the most useless sidekicks ever created), some characters even have more or less interesting back-stories to tell and there are several clumsily delivered but still decent twists to the main scenario. The story is almost compelling at times, but even this last pillar is mostly ruined by a rushed ending, which exposes everything in a massive info dump by the characters without any player input and confuses the poor player with plotholes and the out-of-nowhere deductions from Leonardo. Few real puzzles are put into this project, but you may still find yourself stuck from time to time as objects that has always been there like to suddenly become grabbable and be a key to the stalemate. But my main problem lies with that inverted sliding tile gimmick, few people play adventure games for these kinds of challenge and, if you are not a master of the Mystic Square, it also downright kills the flow of the best and most dynamic act of the game. It's not a plain horrible game without its moments, but I strongly feel that Abbey's downsides are outweighing any fun it could offer. [b]2/5[/b]

I really wish I could recommend this game. It has a neat setting and at certain points it really nails a nice atmosphere. Certain parts of the game are fun and some of the game's problem-resolutions are pretty clever once you figure them out. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to the end of the game because the developers decided to put a difficult sliding tile puzzle in, and evidently I'm not the only one who couldn't get through it. I just find it extremely annoying when adventure game developers put these types of obnoxious actual puzzles in their games, let alone at crucial moments in the game once you've already invested a lot of time in it. People can do those kinds of puzzles online if they wanted to- throwing one in in a game like this just misses the point and adds game time in an extremely lazy way. I think I had read something about that puzzle in the reviews before getting the game, but didn't pay much attention to it. I wish I had listened to them. Also, it's hard to tell from the screenshots, but the animation seems somewhat low-budget. Maybe it is an indie developer, so that is okay, but just to let you know going in... it looks like well-detailed, nice 2d backgrounds with simple, low-budget 3d character animations just sort of superimposed on it. Sometimes you can't notice, but other times it just looks kind of cheap.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to play this game on Windows 10. The reason is - developers used a lot of Spanish letters in game files naming, in example ñ. The game won't even start if you would not fix one of such letters. But there are literally hundreds, if not thousands such files, so you cannot fix them all. Even though the game looks great, it should not be sold on Steam in such a condition. Refer to forums for details, you've been warned.

I'm really suprised that this isn't more well known as a quality point and click adventure. It has a very good plot, mostly good voice acting, sensible puzzles and well done sound and visuals. The best point of this game is the plot quality. It has a really interesting story featuring characters with depth. Your character, a Catholic monk, arrives at a remote monastery with his young acolyte and is asked to help solve a potential murder. Things get complicated quickly but the story never loses credibility. Good scripting (with a few minor mistranslations in the English version) and very solid voice acting make this a great story to experience. Other good points: Understated but well composed music. Very nicely drawn background art. Good puzzle quality Things to make you think twice before buying: It is a bit too expensive given its length (10 hours gameplay at a guess). I don't feel ripped off but try to get it in a sale. The style of character artwork is a bad choice. The game's material has moments that are quite dark but the character faces are Disney cartoon. Character walking speed can be slow although double clicking to quick-travel between screens makes this much less of a problem. In short this is a good story well told with challenging puzzles. Maybe a little too expensive at £15.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. It is apparently based on a book called "The Name of the Rose". It takes place in a monastery, and is about a monk and his novice investigating a series of murders. As one might expect in a game about murders in a monastery, there are some monks of dubious character. There are also several monks who are very decent people. The game is a simple point-and-click, with one slider puzzle. Objects can be a bit hard to find and involve some backtracking around. A couple tips to help with the gameplay- the characters walk slowly, but double-clicking on the next area will take you there right away. Moving the cursor to the top of the screen opens the inventory, moving it to the bottom closes it, and pressing m when in an open area will bring up an interactive map. I wouldn't pay full price for this game, but it was an enjoyable play.

[b]“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...” ― Umberto Eco, [i]The Name of the Rose[/i][/b] [i]The Abbey[/i] is the perfect example of encountering a marvelous story where you least expected it. If I remember correctly, I got this game in one of those weekly sales on a ridiculous price like 2 or 3 dollars. Quickly checking up cartoony, a bit cheap looking animations and somewhat grim art work I wasn't expecting much. Looking for a little filler in my life, I decided to give it a try yesterday evening. It was 5 in the morning when I finished the game without a break! Our story is set during the Middle Ages. Esteemed monk Leonardo del Toledo - an Italian and scholastic Sherlock Holmes, nonetheless - arrives to the Nuestra Senora de la Natividad Abbey to drop off his young novice, Bruno for his study with the local monks. During their journey though, they are assaulted by a hooded figure trying to crush them under a huge boulder in the steep mountain path. After their narrow escape and arrival, the Abbot asks Leonardo to investigate an odd accident that occurred at the abbey the other day, costing a brother of the order his life. The Abbot suspects that the Devil was at work! Wise Leonardo, knowing that there'd be no need for a devil when men's work is at hand in this earth starts his investigation alongside his personal toothache: a genuine idiot of a young boy and his novice: Bruno. The story is heavily inspired by Umberto Eco's [i]The Name of the Rose[/i], a classic murder mystery concerning the Medieval Scholastic Thought, the oppression of the church, the wrath of inquisition and the nature of knowledge. The lore presented within the game to establish the Medieval European setting is way more successful than I'd imagine it to be. Books that characters talk about, historical and religious references they use and the narrative terminology are spot on authentic. Small nuances in the written script - like using the word "ignoramus" rather than "ignorant" as the norm of the era for the educated in Latin - establish a certain dark mood in spite of the cartoony animations, suitable for the setting. What would surprise me most is that the limited selection of characters residing in this secluded abbey - including our main hero - are wondrously well-written with deep personalities, moral and ethical dilemmas, opinions on philosophical subjects, scars of personal experiences and rich backgrounds! It is a philosophical and theological joy to read their dialogues narrating certain realities of the era with both subtle and blatant remarks. The story itself - and the mystery revolving around it - is well worth experiencing. The plotline and the involving parties' actions are well weaved and complicated; quite satisfactory for a mystery reader. Graphics are no prize winner, it is possible to observe that much even checking some screenshots. Character animations are odd, plastic figures with cheap animations, moving with a certain crude form. With better animations, this game could have been much, much more. There is no sync between the animations and the voice acting whatsoever; but the voice acting itself is marvelously good! This must be a game of extremes, with things really good and really bad scattered around. Gameplay isn't complicated at all. You collect certain items, combine some, use them in proper places and talk to people to gather information and bring a conduct to events. Our everyday P&C adventure game. You are welcome to check Leonardo's thoughts and notes in your inventory to get an overlook on the affairs anytime. Bruno will follow you everywhere like a detrimental infection and as the teenager idiot he is, he will worsen things a lot more than he will ease... still, we are a loving, patient and wise monk bringing God's love to any who'd listen, right? [i]The Abbey[/i] is an unexpectedly good purchase for you to consider, especially if it's on sale. I recall Sean Connery's portrayal of William of Baskerville, the monk in [i]The Name of the Rose[/i] as soon as I heard Leonardo talking. It's an unmissable experience for any adventure gamer and the lover of a good old theological argument. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ladystoryteller#curation]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!