I love the idea of an old-school inform/text adventure game. Short, but a good start.
"Sometimes the Ancients didn't know what they were talking about...." :)
Thanks for submitting!

Really cool to see something different like this. Took me a minute to learn what I could do but, once I had that down it was fun to explore through the area. Gave me D&D vibes.

BTW I came here from quill's reddit

Nice, a Zorklike! (is that a thing? Come to think of it, if you squint, your "wisdom of the ancients" icon looks vaguely "Z-shaped" too!)

Nifty little text game. Loved the wall of platitudes!

@john-harper Thanks for playing! Yes, it's a bit short, I found it hard to find ideas to extend it unfortunately.

@chiller Thanks! The genre is old enough to be unfamiliar to most people here, but I enjoy making them :)

@saintchristopher777 Thanks! It is indeed Z-shaped! I hadn't noticed, there's probably a deeper meaning to that! What do you mean, "platitudes"? That's profound wisdom, you know! :)

> $ look at inscriptions
> (...) There are more inscriptions to look at.
> $ look at more inscriptions
> You can't see any such thing.
The game lied to me. :'-(

Nice entry, although a little bit on the short side.

@godsboss thanks for playing! "There are more inscriptions" just means "look at inscription" will show another one the next time, so just repeating that would have done what you wanted.
And yes, it could definitely have been longer.

What an awesome flashback to my youth. Thank you and well done!

@cogcomp thanks! :)

Been a while since I played a text adventure, was an interesting environment! Good job!

I really enjoyed this text adventure! It took me a few minutes to figure out the commands (I thought I had taken the rope when I used 'x rope', and had to come back for it later), but after that is was all very clear. Nice take on the theme and a funny story, well done!

@predominant thanks for playing!

@last-angle glad you could figure it out. Thanks for playing!

Nice one. Some flashbacks clearly were had while playing.

Also, I'd not dismiss large wooden cube with GOLD on it so easy ;)

Thanks for playing, @enderr42. I wouldn't be too convinced by that gold, who knows what it *really* is, given what they call "wisdom"...

I may not have been attacked by bears this time, or grabbed a honeycomb, or a shoe, or a treadmill, but i conquered this game and beat it. I'm so proud. I'm also happy that i'm rembering how to play these things. :-)

Nice entry and not bad for a text based adventure. Something I think would work great for this type of game as a tutorial is to bold font some of the clues early on to make it more obvious what to do. Overall the text interactions felt natural to type. though.

Always glad to see Inform represented :) I am convinced that the "ancients" are a bunch of teenagers having a lark. Considering some of your past entries, I was surprised this had so few puzzles in it. It's a nice little story, but I didn't really find anything difficult here or even hardly an obstacle. I'm also somewhat questioning this archaeologist's scruples. I ran into some small issues during play: I tried to pick up all the scrolls and had the damaged scroll before the "a scroll" and couldn't get it to refer to the other scroll so I could read it. So I had to drop the damaged one in another room just to do it. It's a problem with "a scroll" not having a unique descriptor to go by. Also, after standing on the cube, I expected to be able to "climb rope" but I got the rather silly message of "Little is to be achieved by that." You just need an understand rule there or something. Anyway, good showing! A nice little story :)

@commanderstitch thanks for playing, and thanks for remembering my previous games :)

@frompdx thanks for playing! I agree that there should be more clues for new players, it's just that I'm not sure if I'll ever manage to do it properly. I've used a hint system in the past (ld43 and ld44) where you could get context-sensitive help, but doing that is quite a bit of work in a 48 hour jam. In ld46 I tried using bold text for things people can type, but I get a bit worried (maybe wrongly so) that that works against exploration and trying things... Maybe next time I'll try something where there is such highlighting if the player wants it, but it remains optional.

@incobalt thanks for playing again! It's always nice to see people return with the sort of quality feedback I only wish I could give others :)
I wanted to add puzzles after working out the entire plot so I wouldn't have to rewrite everything if things didn't fit, but it took me a long time to think of an ending (and even then I'm not really happy with what I came up with), which I think is why there aren't a lot of them. On the other hand, maybe this will let more people finish it :)
That scroll issue definitely is something I need to pay more attention to in the future, it's a clear stupid bug. And I can't believe I missed "climb rope"! I spent a lot of time going over everything trying to make sure I didn't miss anything obvious, and i added "climb" basically everywhere else, and then I forgot this one...

Cool, played the Infocom treasures when younger a lot. And very nice to see interactive fiction and text adventure entries in the jam, even if they are hard to find. (there should be tags on games for easier search)
The game was nice and short, I found the "wisdom" on on the walls very amusing, and who knows, maybe we just do not yet understand this turtle thing? :wink: Good job!

Thanks for playing, @zondarg! Yes, you're right, maybe they're the wise ones and we got it all wrong! I wouldn't be on it though :)

What a simple and delightful story! I was surprised that all of my more complex commands still worked on first try. I guess I do remember how Inform7 works.

I second what was said above about how having different types of scrolls made commands confusing.

And yes, the game is very short. I actually don't think it needs to be much longer. It would be nice if there was a little bit more to do on each floor, rather than just one item and then the way down. But I would actually rather have more fleshed out description to imagine the world and these hapless philosophers rather than more puzzles.

Thanks for playing, @carraka! In hindsight, I suspect I never actually carried the scrolls around during testing. The usual problems with testing your own code... I agree that a more fleshed out world would have been nice, I just didn't really manage to find the inspiration for that this time.

This is a really nice old-school text adventure, but rather short.

@flying-dog-fish thanks for playing!

Neat text based game. I played while my daughter (10yrs) was watching and she was amazed that there is such a thing as a game without graphics. It was a fun experience once we got the hang of the available verbs.

@jacobrutter thanks for playing! It's always nice to introduce someone to a new concept :)

I sat down with a nice glass of whiskey to work my way through a fun text adventure. The glass is still mostly full, but the disconnect from my expectations makes this very hilarious to me. I think the lack of complexity in this game is actually a very funny misdirect for fans of old school text adventures. Great job.

Thanks for playing, @bentglasstube! Yes, it's a simple thing without much (or any) complexity at all. That was not a design goal, but I just couldn't think of much. I'm glad you liked the result though :)

I like these kind of inform7 Games. I always feel remembered on old days which is great.

I like the pseudo philosophic tune in the game and the special quote with the fittin answer in the game. A great reference.

The Game was maybe a bit Short but overall very very good. I loved it.

Thanks for playing, @deathstorm!

I had a similar experience with @bentglasstube, but with coffee-flavored brandy (don't judge!). I got one of the best laughs I've had from any game in this LD when I realized I had achieved the ultimate (anti-)wisdom. I agree that the subversion of expected complexity makes it a really enjoyable moment! I'd say it was a case where the time constraints produced a cool effect :)

Nice job, I really enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing! The "wisdom" getting more wise throughout was the initial plan, but to be entirely honest I had hoped to think of a better ending. Maybe coffee-flavoured brandy would have helped with getting ideas, but I didn't have any :)

I'm not great at text based adventures, but I enjoyed some of the humor from me trying ridiculous options, like pickup up the temple. "That's hardly portable" ha! Nice work.

@100th-coin thanks for playing! I can't claim credit for all of those responses though, a lot of them are the inform7 defaults. They're very good :)

Loved it! Love text adventures, love the humor, love the ancients!

This was quick and easy and great fun, even gave me some inspiration for my D&D campaign.

Great job!

Thanks for playing, @zuvr! The ancients appreciate the love :)

Haha I really liked the story arc, very entertaining! I feel like your text adventures just keep getting better! Here's my time with it on my stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1oYMc95du8

Thanks for playing, @philstrahl! Glad you enjoyed it :)