Duel

A cool puzzle couched in imaginative fantasy prose. The thing begins with us tying ourselves to a post; our opponent has done the same at the other end of the battlefield, and it appears that duels in this world are conducted by summoning things or concepts from memory to do battle for us. We have five things/concepts that we can summon: they behave differently, and they have different strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to play them in such an order and with such timing that our opponent is left unable to neutralise the last one. It's a bit of a brain-teaser, which I do appreciate.

The fantasy setting, with its worldbuilding, gives this a certain degree of originality. The idea of magical summoning is not new, nor is the idea of a wizard's duel; what is new is the way in which these two ideas have been justified and presented. The "tools" are diverse, some of them having significant backstories attached; and they are so different as to suggest that they come from different worlds. Even within the scope of a short, single-puzzle game, a vast breadth of worldbuilding has been created.

If I have any complaints, they are minor. I could do without the inflated amount of clicking through the introduction sequence (which seems to be a rule with regard to hypertext games) and the memory of madness, though I will admit that it does seem to add to the atmosphere.

For breakfast, I seem to recall that I had nasi lemak (coconut rice, omelette, a hot sauce made from shrimp paste, a small grilled fish, ground nuts, packaged together in a banana leaf) and green tea.