Hadean Lands Reviews

Finished it after around 47 hours. Excellent IF, difficult but fair ; even if I struggled sometimes to make my way around, I never felt bored at the point I wanted to abandon. I wish there were more IF of this quality.

I learned of this game through a review that described it as "so difficult that it isn't a game." I would disagree with that - I feel like I'm making progress, but wow, doing this without hints is rough. There are about 20 different things that I realize I need to do, but figuring out HOW to do literally any of them is getting me. This game isn't so much about figuring out the solution to the puzzles but instead figuring out how to actually enact that solution. I'm loving it so far.

This interactive fiction is a very fun, puzzle-oriented experience. It features an interesting mechanic that allows you to restart from the beginning while retaining your knowledge about the world and its formulas. Additionally, you can perform many familiar actions with just one or two commands, avoiding the tedium of repeating the same tasks. The only downside is that it doesn't provide enough explanation from a story perspective, and the ending felt a bit disappointing and confusing to me. Despite this, it is still highly recommended, especially if you enjoy puzzle-fests like Curses, Jigsaw, So Far, The Mulldoon Legacy, and others.

This is a game about repetition that manages to avoid being repetitive. Solving a puzzle once allows you to perform the same task easily in the future as part of a single command. If you want to go somewhere you've been to before, it doesnt matter how complicated the trip is or how many puzzles are in your way. You can say "go to ", and the game will do it, using your own solutions to the puzzles along the way. It can also remember item locations and various bits of world information for you. In other words, Hadean Lands manages to avoid all of the things that usually bother me about text adventures. I have very much enjoyed my time with it. (one warning, though: dont quit using the "quit" command. that actually resets your save. Just close the game out and it will pick up where you left off.)

This is an exemplary model for what interactive fiction should be. I gladly paid for the DLC (which does nothing) to support the author. I don't want to give away anything, but I will say the core mechanic is alchemy, and the game is largely about experimenting to modify alchemical recipes in novel ways to overcome obstacles. It's a very flexible text adventure, and it rewards clever forethought rather than random guessing. This is the sort of game that works best when you decide to put it down for a while and think about the puzzles to brainstorm ideas before returning. It's a game you play even more when you aren't playing it, in other words. There are no dead-ends (you never need to save or full-reset, though you can), there is a comprehensive library of facts and an interface to access them easily (also a map interface), and if you need to find an item you've seen before you can have the character go there by memory so repeating steps is not very burdensome. The game is difficult, but it can be reasoned through. There are things you can do in the game which are complex but do not advance you toward the goal, which is interesting. I beat the game without any hints, but I'm very good at this sort of thing. I don't remember how long it took. Steam says almost 70 hours, but I left the game up overnight more than once as well as when I was at work. It probably took me between six and twelve hours (of keyboard play, not counting the rumination), but that's just a guess. The story is a little far on the cryptic side, and it seems like the game could have gone a little further than it did, but these are hardly tarnishes on such a gem. I'm presently working on a piece of interactive fanfiction that was inspired by this game and uses a similar approach. You know a game is good when it forces you to make another game. Thank you for making this game. <3

Don't get me wrong, I really want to recommend this game. I know Andrew Plotkin's IF work for a long time. But when the text says 'work assignment' is among my inventory, I pretty much expect to be able to type 'read work assignment' and it WILL READ IT, not say 'no such thing'. I mean, come on. You know the rule: if the object is in the description IT MUST BE FAMILIAR TO THE PROMPT. I'm really p*ssed cuz I'm stuck in the very beginning and the prompt won' even re-read my instructions cuz it doesn't understand I have them in my inventory? You have GOT TO be kidding me, Andrew.

Last Interactive Fiction game I played was Zork, all those long years ago. I had terrible memories: it was hard, confusing and frustrating. I'm not sure why I decided to buy Hadean Lands then (a game to play during work downtimes, unobtrusively text-based so no one will notice this is definitely not work-related? Something like that, probably), but it was a great idea. The game is brilliant, hard without being unfair, the puzzles are clever and satisfying, and the writing amazing. The author has this splendid way with words, where with glorious economy everything is made clear, and yet the style is soft, flowing, beautiful. Obviously, I recommond Hadean lands - but remember, this is not a "let me hold your hand and show you which button to click" game; it's a game where you really have to think outside the box (But never illogically).

First off - I very much enjoyed this game, and thought it was well worth the money. If you like interactive fiction, you should definitely buy it and play it. Pros: [list] [*] Very well written - evocative descriptions. [*] Zero instances of 'guess the verb'. No puzzle succeeded/failed on obscure words. [*] An extraordinarly helpful parser, which remembers item locations for you(once encountered), as well as how to perform various chains of actions(if you must repeat them), removing the tediousness of having to type long sequences of commands again and again (including 'go to ', if location was previously discovered) [*]With one exception, no puzzle required "kitchen sink" testing of everything possible. If I was trying kitchen sink stuff, it's because I was missing something more obvious. (I tried a lot of kitchen sink solutions, but when I did realize the proper solution I felt silly for not having thought of it earlier). If you're stuck, take a break, think about it, come back to it. [*]NO "WALKING DEAD" SCENARIOS. You cannot get yourself stuck in a way where you can't complete the game. When one way occurred to me to try, I saw how the author had planned around it, and I'm thoroughly convinced you can't get your playthrough stuck. [/list] Cons: [list] [*]There's one key puzzle in the game whose solution requires you to try something you've been taught not to try, and is compounded by what I felt was an unfortunately ambiguous error message if you're near the solution but not quite right. Note that this is the only puzzle I found to be this way. [/list]

Hadean Lands is an excellent modern text adventure / Interactive Fiction game. The puzzles are unique and satisfying, with a good level of difficulty. You'll need to combine the things you find in very interesting ways with rituals and formulas. The game's memory system, allowing you to repeat a series of commands all at once is crucial and an excellent innovation. All together, Hadean Lands is what IF should be -- the experience of both reading a book and adventuring inside it at the same time. I played Hadean Lands previously outside of steam. The new packaged verison includes a Game menu that has a built-in map, list of your formulas + rituals, and the IF Reference card, all of which are very useful for new and old players alike!

A great but difficult modern interactive fiction. (Yes, that's the games we used to call text adventures back in the eighties, in the high times of Incofom.) You enter text, the game describes what happens. In Hadean Lands, you start as a apprentice alchemist on a starship, and of course, something has gone horribly wrong. So you try to work your way through many obstacles, having to learn all those rituals quickly. There's two optional conveniance features, a graphical map and a journal for the many facts and rituals you will learn. Do yourself a favor and issue the command "COMMANDS" early when playing. Hadean Lands has some special mechanics and means to cope with them; you should know about these. Hadean Lands worked flawlessly on Linux. The author has fixed a problem lately that some people have had on Linux.