Leadlight

Well. Hol-ley crap. I had decided to power through the rest of my games and review them all today (4 left!), but Leadlight, you stole the show. I played for what must have been 6 hours, and even still I only got a score of about 50, so after I finish writing this review, I'm going back to attempt that max score. I am not sure what it was, but this was far and above my favorite. It had that classic feel. It grabbed my full attention and had me constantly planning on how to make optimal moves and what to do better next time. One of my first actions was to walk east unarmed right into the arms of a zombie, and that being my phobia, freaked me right out. I immediately got sucked in and determined that I am going to beat these fuckers. Every action had me on the edge of my seat, and while the dangers were often unforgivingly random, I think that's what being in a surreal horror situation would be like.

One of my favorite spots was where you find a woman sitting on the fountain, tip it over, find out it is only a doll, leave and then there is the same description as the doll being on the fountain but FUCK NO THAT IS A ZOMBIE HOLY CRAP.
That was my thought process there.

The puzzles started to get trickier inside the school itself, and some of the puzzles seemed more arbitrary (why a bell, for instance?) fighting multiple foes was something that was really draining. I am not sure if I should have just taken better advantage of the save / reload functions, or if I missed some food, but by the end of the game I won with like 3 HP left.

Anything I can complain about would just be quibbles, for instance the misspelling during combat, and the lack of "X" (although [blank] worked for G (so handy for the fights!), and N, S, E, W all were fine). {note: EX works, I didn't realize that.}

This game was just, I dunno, fantastic. A masterpiece. I have a gold standard of adventure games, somewhat obscure, but I am sure many here will recognize it. There is a scene from Jeff Vogel's Exile III: Ruined World where you enter a crypt, and no matter how many torches you light, they are extinguished and your map goes black, coupled with a simple text explaining the extinguishing and the deathly chill. You just know monsters are going to appear. That specific event scared the crap out of me with 8-bit pixels and text, and ten years later it's still memorable. I think that Leadlight parallels this with its execution and construction.

Edit:

Played it through again, Missing 2 weapons and 5 secrets, so I'm giving it another go!