Hadean Lands

Name: Hadean Lands
Price: 4.99 USD
Rating: 5 (15 reviews)
Author: Zarfhome Software Consulting

Interactive Alchemical Fiction

$4.99 · Designed for iPad

15 Ratings
Ages

9+
Years
Category

Puzzle
Developer

Zarfhome Software Consulting
Language

EN
English
Size

19.2
MB

*Winner of the XYZZY Interactive Fiction Awards for Best Puzzles, Best Setting, Best Implementation, and Best Use of Innovation for 2014.* *Hadean Lands* is interactive fiction — a classic text adventure. No graphics! No menus! No point-and-click! You type your commands, and read what happens next. This is the most complex puzzle structure I’ve ever designed. It’s the culmination of four years of work. I launched *Hadean Lands* as a Kickstarter project in 2010; it was a runaway success. Now it’s ready for you to play. - Fluid interface designed for comfortable typing and reading. - Full-length puzzle adventure with interlocking alchemical challenges. - Pop-up palette of commonly used commands. - Built-in game map — tap to go directly to any explored room. - Journal tab records all the recipes and rituals that you’ve discovered. - Full support for VoiceOver (speech output) and dictation (speech input) on devices that offer these features. “The overall arc, for me, was that I spent the first bit of the game really excited about the possibility space, and then the next several hours feeling like my head was going to explode... This game ranks off the charts on the ingenuity measure.” — Emily Short “The bottom line is that Hadean Lands makes great strides towards perfecting the classic adventure game — not just the text adventure.” — Steven Watson, AdventureGamers.com

Ratings & Reviews

5.0

out of 5

15 Ratings

VERY DIFFICULT
01/07/2018

Prosilire
This game is brilliantly crafted, the mountaintop of Interactive Fiction. I found it to be very difficult and time consuming. I’ve considered myself to be fairly adept at Interactive fiction, but I eventually had to resort to walkthroughs, as I had run out of personal time (and energy) to play this.The play is fair, creative, forgiving and well written. The alchemical aspect, as well as the unique time-space malleability make for a world with almost an almost dizzying array of options, and a dimension of problem solving (layers of cascading dependencies) I hadn’t encountered before. If you are a beginner at Interactive fiction, or (like me) you enjoy a casual puzzler now and then, you may want to skip this for now, and save this title for later. But DO PLAY it when you can dedicate a level of time, concentration and dedication that a master puzzle requires.
VERY DIFFICULT
01/07/2018

Prosilire

This game is brilliantly crafted, the mountaintop of Interactive Fiction. I found it to be very difficult and time consuming. I’ve considered myself to be fairly adept at Interactive fiction, but I eventually had to resort to walkthroughs, as I had run out of personal time (and energy) to play this.The play is fair, creative, forgiving and well written. The alchemical aspect, as well as the unique time-space malleability make for a world with almost an almost dizzying array of options, and a dimension of problem solving (layers of cascading dependencies) I hadn’t encountered before. If you are a beginner at Interactive fiction, or (like me) you enjoy a casual puzzler now and then, you may want to skip this for now, and save this title for later. But DO PLAY it when you can dedicate a level of time, concentration and dedication that a master puzzle requires.
Unique and absorbing
05/14/2023

Abbrown
This game is unlike any other adventure game I have ever played, combining a mystery adventure, puzzles, a new take on the sci-fi genre.Think Myst meets WH4K crossed with Simon the Sorcerer.
Unique and absorbing
05/14/2023

Abbrown

This game is unlike any other adventure game I have ever played, combining a mystery adventure, puzzles, a new take on the sci-fi genre.Think Myst meets WH4K crossed with Simon the Sorcerer.
Strange and Engaging
10/30/2014

BlindguyNW
This is a game I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It’s got one of the strangest concepts I’ve seen—alchemy mixed with science fiction, and yet it works. It’s a text adventure, but don’t let that scare you off, the game does a lot to make your puzzle solving as painless as possible, and from what I’ve seen thus far it’s very difficult to put things into an unwinnable state. I won’t say impossible, just because bugs and weird mistakes can always happen.I must praise the game’s accessibility with VoiceOver, the built-in screen reader on iOS. Even the map works, something I wasn’t necessarily expecting. All I can say is, if you like logical puzzles, an expansive setting, and don’t mind reading to have fun, you’ll definitely enjoy this game.
Strange and Engaging
10/30/2014

BlindguyNW

This is a game I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It’s got one of the strangest concepts I’ve seen—alchemy mixed with science fiction, and yet it works. It’s a text adventure, but don’t let that scare you off, the game does a lot to make your puzzle solving as painless as possible, and from what I’ve seen thus far it’s very difficult to put things into an unwinnable state. I won’t say impossible, just because bugs and weird mistakes can always happen.I must praise the game’s accessibility with VoiceOver, the built-in screen reader on iOS. Even the map works, something I wasn’t necessarily expecting. All I can say is, if you like logical puzzles, an expansive setting, and don’t mind reading to have fun, you’ll definitely enjoy this game.
Brilliant, innovative parser-based interactive fiction
11/21/2014

Inconstant Reader
To get this out of the way: this is IF/text adventure, but it's not about solving mazes and playing guess-the-verb. It is about intricate, fascinating puzzles with a unique iterative mechanic that gives you a sense of mastery; a detailed, coherent alternate universe based on alchemy; and an overall meta-puzzle as the player tries to figure out what happened, not to mention who he/she is. Innovative parser commands streamline gameplay so you're thinking about the game, not the mechanics, and the iOS interface gives you an interactive map and journal, as well as multiple ways of minimizing typing. The game is a joy to play, but fair warning: it swallowed up an entire week of my time.
Brilliant, innovative parser-based interactive fiction
11/21/2014

Inconstant Reader

To get this out of the way: this is IF/text adventure, but it's not about solving mazes and playing guess-the-verb. It is about intricate, fascinating puzzles with a unique iterative mechanic that gives you a sense of mastery; a detailed, coherent alternate universe based on alchemy; and an overall meta-puzzle as the player tries to figure out what happened, not to mention who he/she is. Innovative parser commands streamline gameplay so you're thinking about the game, not the mechanics, and the iOS interface gives you an interactive map and journal, as well as multiple ways of minimizing typing. The game is a joy to play, but fair warning: it swallowed up an entire week of my time.