Fool's Errand, The

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/foolserrand/foolserrand.htm

Previously I'd only ever heard of this game as the inspiration for The 7th Guest. This article provides quite a bit of additional background as to what this puzzle-solving game is all about.

[Narushima]

And do go visit the developer's site, it's full of funky stuff : www.fools-errand.com/
You can also download a demo of the next instalment, which has been in the pipes for as long as Duke Nukem Forever, and is apparently shipping in January.

[Weasel]

Let's see if "January" is next month or the one in 2013. =P

My brother was actually joking about the sequel - "The Fool and His Money" - and how the title must be oddly fitting for anybody that has actually put money into pre-ordering it at this stage. Not saying that the game will be bad, because the demo shows quite a bit of promise of being more of that excellent Cliff Johnson-powered puzzley goodness, but y'know, paying money for a game that has taken so long to come out...(then again, that's what i said about duke nukem forever itself, and gamestop actually honored pre-orders dating back to 1998...)

[KeeperBvK]

This is the kind of single-game article I come to HG101 for. Never heard of it before, but now that I've read about the whole structure, the whole tarot-card inspired setting and the general puzzle abundance I feel like going out to buy an Amiga just for this (can't seem to figure out DOS-Box). Thanks for the article!

[Narushima]

Dec 15, 2011 3:31:11 GMT -5 KeeperBvK said:

[...] I feel like going out to buy an Amiga just for this (can't seem to figure out DOS-Box).

You need neither an Amiga nor Dos-Box. You can download the game and a mac emulator on this page : www.thefoolsgold.com/downloads/games-windows.htm

[KeeperBvK]

You just made my day! Thanks a bunch.

[jorpho]

I kind of prefer "3 in Three" myself – which is Mac-exclusive, unfortunately. The "final" puzzle is not quite as neatly integrated as the Sun's map, but it's a good deal more challenging. You can skip "At The Carnival", probably. I never tried "Are We There Yet", which uses the same engine, but was not made by Cliff Johnson.

(If I was tremendously ambitious, I would find some way to take the source code for Executor and make nice little self-contained Windows versions of each of Mr. Johnson's games, but no one seems to have succeeded in doing much with the Executor source code so far.)

Anyway, it's curious to see that The Humbug puzzle looks the same on Amiga as it does on the Macintosh. The squarified version for the MS-DOS port is very disappointing and awkward in comparison.

[Narushima]

Dec 15, 2011 10:48:03 GMT -5 jorpho said:

I kind of prefer "3 in Three" myself – which is Mac-exclusive, unfortunately.

3 in Three is indeed brilliant and quite a lot harder. But at least The Fool's Errand I could finish !

And you can play 3 in Three on Windows as well, using the same emulator, all this to be found at the same address : www.thefoolsgold.com/downloads/games-windows.htm

[jorpho]

Dec 9, 2011 10:41:29 GMT -5 Weasel said:

Let's see if "January" is next month or the one in 2013. =P

Bah, September now!

With DNF out of the way, it's a race between this and Black Mesa: Source.

[Narushima]

Quite annoying, isn't it ?

[pseudo3d]

3 in Three I never got into...it had a fun story and neat sound effects but the puzzles just seemed needlessly obtuse.

[bakudd]

System's Twilight is another good one (Mac-only) which has some very hard puzzles

[Narushima]

I actually found Twilight to be too hard to be enjoyable, but it wasn't bad.

[Malev]

That one background in the comparisions looks ripped from the first Evil Dead.

[drpepperfan]

I honestly had no idea The Fool and His Money came out last year. I assumed it was still stuck in permanent hiatus! Will probably download and play later today, been waiting for it for a long time. Anyone else played it? Is it gonna be added to the article?