The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer

It's a fairly standard dungeon crawl. We're investigating a new archaeological site, apparently the headquarters and home of a legendary figure known as Kas the Betrayer. There's a fair amount of historical backstory explaining the significance of this person, and it's fed to us at a good, natural pace. I never felt as though I were taking time away from the adventure to read an appendix.

There are also a couple of factions who are anxious to get their hands on a certain treasure that Kas is known to have had; ultimately, you have a choice of handing it over to one of them, or keeping the thing for yourself. That's really about the only choice there is in this game, but that's okay: agency here is not a matter of story direction, but one of puzzle solving. The hypertext format doesn't really lend itself very well to complex puzzling, I think, but for all that some of the puzzles are not bad. Two of them, though, are basically crack-the-code puzzles, which can be brute-forced; I understand that later versions of the game include a poem that provides hints as to the code, but the version I played contained no such thing.

It's very slight, for a puzzle game. And yet, thinking back, it seems to me that this game actually does a lot of things right, in its own unassuming way. The exposition was well handled, and the world-building is pretty good. There's a bit of trouble with some text continuing to describe an action long after it's been done, but I think that is it as far as bugs go.

As breakfast, this is buttered toast, a boiled egg, and strong tea. Mostly competent, with very little fanfare.