Apeomancer's Topical Quest Collective - Part 4

McNabb's Castle Quest

Analysis: A fairly large quest, but more tightly held together than Umbrarg's Island - it generally feels like one big area rather than many smaller ones. Set in the haunted Scottish castle of the McSprochan family, this quest has a very different feel to the main land, combining a ghostly, and at times grisly, atmosphere with a wicked sense of humour - the mobiles include a zombie in a 'kinky maid's outfit', a vampire goldfish and an animated compost heap. Alongside these are the somewhat spookier ghosts of a strangulation victim and the mad-eyed lord that haunts the ground floor, plus vicious animated torture implements (many mobiles in this quest are animated objects).

The quest makes great use of ghostly scenes that briefly appear then vanish. These apparitions sometimes give you clues to the main plot of the quest (the one in the main lounge is quite important), but also provide a lot of the sinister atmosphere (my personal favourite is the one of the woman tearing her lover's throat out).

The quest is fairly dangerous, with many quite aggressive mobiles - most of them are of the 'can give you some trouble, but you shouldn't usually have to use up any wafers' variety. However, to balance this, there is also a lot of surprisingly valuable easy "t" lying around for anyone to pick up - possibly McNabb is used to the less-populous .com environment with it's lower VALs, making the treasure more valuable in the comparatively busy Happy Hour.

Overall, this quest is well designed and described, and is great fun to play, with an atmosphere all of its own. Just watch out for that bloody goldfish!

Right, that's enough for one issue. With any luck I'll be back next time with some more quest reviews ... or maybe it'll be another 10 month wait like last time. Either way, happy questing!

Have fun!

Apeomancer (aka Maxmage)