At scaled size, the font is smaller than I like, but the contrast is fairly good. Will it print readably on a low quality printer? Yes. Will I need to buy some reading glasses? Also yes. Considering only one entry I have read so far managed to be a larger font than this though, I can't really say a lot at this point.

I wasn't sold on the cover at first. It's beautifully done and absolutely works. There was just something about it that held my hand on clicking the first time it came up as one of the options on what to review next. I can't explain why. It feels both simple, but also professional. It is well laid out and feels like it done with paint markers. The more I've looked at it, the more I like it honestly. That appreciation goes for all the art in this. All of it feels cohesive, professional, and well chosen.

As I move into the actual content, the layouts are beautiful. I'm actually rather upset that things get marred by a strange sideways ascii as part of the background overlaying text. Scrolling around for a moment, it's showing up once on page 2, and twice on page 3. I tried redownloading, refreshing the page, etc. It stays there. I didn't see anyone comment about it at the time I pulled things up, so I don't know if this is a 'me' thing or if everyone has it in their download and just overlooked it. I did however notice that some people aren't able to see room numbering due to a PDF reader issue. Maybe mine is picking up on something normally hidden? Not sure. I can screenshot if this is something you aren't aware of.

The backstory is interesting and clean. I think the writing could be a bit more evocative and fluid, but is fairly tight in terms of conveying information. The inclusion of the Lovecraftian elements is nice. I say that because if you know, you know, but if you don't know, it isn't harming the flow in the least. I can't say the same for the cryopod. I get that it's there for the weird science fantasy element, but I don't think it's helping the overall story. It is a jarring shift in genre tone. When I was looking for references to that weird mark before, I did notice others apparently mentioned the cryopod as well, so I won't harp on it.

The mention of the mansion not being real feels redundant. Being in a mindscape means nothing is real, so I just assume that by default. I similarly don't feel like I need told to alter things to suit my needs. I do that with any module honestly. Still, I don't fault you for deciding to include that.

Encounters are interesting and offer some positives and negatives. That said, at a 1 in 6 chance per room change and the low number of combat options, it feels like they are unlikely to have more than one random dangerous encounter in a single play through. I'll have to wait to see how encounters are for the actual map to decide how I feel about that. Unrelated, the quote is cute.

First room offers some setting, bolds key elements, and only offers a risk if players decide to do something they probably won't choose to do. Fair enough. Strait away entry two has me looking between it and the map. It's talking about a pit leading to the library, but when I look at the map, they are on the same level as far as I can understand. I believe what this means is there's a tunnel leading between the two locations. Fair enough. Better wording would have prevented the momentary confusion however.

Otherwise this area is fine. Offers an alternate secret route, a treasure item that's also a key, and a potential boon and backstory element. Granted that last set is less likely depending on the nature of the group involved, but good to have it there. The other entry to the building leads to an immediate and relatively obvious fight. Good to let them see it coming so they feel smart for not just walking between them. It also likely helps them gauge how tough the coming fights will be.

Area 3's art is doing the heavy lifting for descriptions. Nothing wrong with that when space is limited. We get the important elements actually written so no harm no foul. I do wonder about the crystal. It seems like there should be a sort of danger clock associated with it. As in a set number of times you can get close and have things grow weirder before something really unpleasant starts happening.

The library is going to be a casual interest to some players and an absolute treasure trove to others, largely dependent on their PC and system being used. Those odd images I mentioned earlier make me want to scream here. They overlap perfectly in such a way that Hastur is entirely obscured. Deeply annoying. Beyond that however, this is the first time the system neutral element is forming an issue for me.

With previous encounters, I could easily swap in whatever from the existing system. Two knight statues? Stone or iron golems, animate armor, etc. Half-wolf knight? Lycathrope with armor. 'Abomination'? Literally anything weird I want to pull that is fitting for their character level. The transformed book however feels like I would want to put more legwork in. Even just a faint guideline such as 'PCs who attempted to read far enough to cause a transformation will require a very difficult mental check to avoid a temporary reduction in mental abilities' or something similar. It tells me how the mind was affected and how readily they could resist it so I can scale it to my own system of choice. Having some sort of generic reference stat for rough strength scale would be nice too. Presumably it isn't incorporeal, but facing off with a tentacled book imp is very different from a writhing mass the size of a bear.

Gained knowledge is always good. However, spell scrolls are tricky. It's established this place isn't real. It's all in a mindscape. So I assume any scroll not used here is going to disappear when they leave. It's not really said though and I know at least one player who would want to argue about 'taking his loot' if it just disappears and I can't clarify it was explicitly in the document. Is he a dick? Absolutely. We all have that one guy we knew since we first started gaming and who isn't quite enough of a jerk to kick from the group... but who you sometimes consider it anyway on.

Dining room is okay. I am a little confused about the lavatory. First, the image shows a very modern looking toilet. It was noted earlier that the setting is best for medieval fantasy, so just like the cryopod, this feels out of place. More importantly, you note it as an alternate entrance, but to what? The building? There's nothing on that outer wall implying a fallen area of the building and the modern toilet/tub setup doesn't leave any large opening for someone to crawl in from a cess pit. This feels like it's there solely for the sake of offering extra directions in (which you were fine with two of on the small map) without really adding one people are likely to find and use. I don't think I have ever had a player ask to circle a building before entering it unless there was a very good reason first.

Kitchen is fine. Unlike the lavatory, I won't question this alternate entry. It's logical to have a back door here for servants and is something players could be logically expected to accept without question. Are they going to use it as a way in? Probably not. But that's not a bad thing to have here since it's thematic.

Bedroom entry makes sense why you combined them given the space limits. I'd probably want each room separated though in an expanded. I'm also realizing it's a bit hard to see room division walls. I didn't even realize until I got to here that there was a hallway there. It blended in visually. If you can find a way to draw that out a bit more, perhaps using light color variations, it would help. Lastly, the 'items as keys' thing has become a bit stale at this point. It's feeling less like a unique element and more like a series of video-game puzzles. Varying things up might be useful. It does lead to potential backtracking, but few players I have met leave anything that seems remotely useful or valuable behind.

Numbering breaks down at IX. So far, I can logically follow the flow with my eye. The first five made sense where you have the initial location, the side area in that location, the entry, the main hall, then a side venture into the library since it relates back to the second area. Perfect. We then move to the next page with VI and follow a slow arc across the top of the map. However it now breaks down. The next room in the loop is XI, but obviously IX is the next one written about. I could see hopping over XI to the room currently as X.

That would make sense for breaking the movement of my eye on the map because there's no way to access any of them from VII and that's clearly a central room to reach two of the remaining three exclusively. Basically, what I am saying is this arrangement fails for me. Either the current X or XI should be the IX and go from there.

The room itself has more items whose presence may or may not evaporate when they leave. I don't care which you go with, but pick one. GMs are aware they can decide to change it a different way. Heck, you already made it clear they can before this, so just pick an answer and make it so. More puzzle items. At this point I know I have 2 puzzles with 5 items in a dozen-room map. If you're going to weed one of the two out, keep the hex puzzle as a physical puzzle and switch the other puzzle to one of remembering the two important names to input in some way. This way it's still holding the idea of the puzzle mechanic, but offering a wider variety of concept beyond pick up all the little things and put them into holes.

Palid mask... dear god. Anyone with the faintest familiarity is going to recoil from that like a viper. Even so, be explicit. How likely are they to suffer mental damage? Is it ongoing rolls, or just one? What are the signs of changing? Is it instant or slow? How hard is it to resist that as well? I don't need numbers, but I do want rough ideas so when I pull this out of a folder in 2 years, I am not stuck randomly throwing together whatever comes to mind on the fly 2 drinks and 3 hours in. Being system agnostic is wonderful, but temper it with solid elements to anchor onto.

Greenhouse has another entry. A lot of those that weren't mentioned back in area 1, but would have had to be accessed from there. I shouldn't be reading about them on the bottom portion of the last page. Granted, if I look closely at the map, they are implied in the art, but since doors are hard to make out at times, the growth isn't even mentioned in the room description so much as just visually crawling out of a window in the art, and I have zero chance of guessing there's a way to climb into a modern toilet from anything on the map page, these things do matter.

Specificity is turning out to be the biggest issue I am having in this. I again run into a vague statement. 'Too much time'. Okay. 3 rounds? An hour? A week and four days? Where do I put the line for what counts as too much? It's there to motivate them not to linger in the room, so why not just give a real world time range that makes sense? Searching a room in a lot of games is 10 minutes, so maybe say 'more than 10 minutes in the room' as your marker?

Hexes and poem are fine. Not too hard to figure out. Uses a near-rhyme which few people do. No real complains. I actually like the little visual there as well and offsetting the poem in a 'paper' callout box is smart.

The final room is interesting. It tells us she doesn't need those keys to move about. It's her mindscape after all. Her lack of real hostility is nice. Someone's going to get her angry. It happens. Still, there's no real clear ending here. Or more to say, there's not a satisfying one. If we talk and leave, we didn't really accomplish anything. If we fight her and the hybrid, it's a rough battle, but presumably we expel back into reality.

Those are fine situations as 'options', but if they are the only options, there's no real sense of ever having mattered here. If you expand, I would love to see there be other ways to resolve this. Maybe there's a way to help her let go of the pain. Maybe it's possible to get her to let go of the corrupt power that caused it all. Perhaps there's something of those two lost souls left to try to turn bring her peace or even turn against her for the sake of the world? There's a lots of ways this could resolve and feel satisfying depending on what the goals of the party were.

I also find myself wondering about the upstairs. I get it... space. I also remember a mention of opening that up in the expansion in the comments, so I won't linger on this. Still, I know my past players and there's no way they're not going to obsess over that upstairs until they either get themselves killed or get up there.

Anyway, so that's my rambling incoherent stream of consciousness review. I hope you can pluck some gems out of that. Either way, I need you to understand just how clean and beautiful this was overall. It wasn't without faults, but neither are expensive paid products. For a small space, you packed a lot in and you did a ton of heavy lifting with very few visuals. You made every decision count and I don't think it would take much to elevate this quite high. Thanks for taking the time to participate and I imagine I will be pleased to see where you go with the expansion.

The look and feel of this adventure are wonderfully nostalgic, and I love the greenhouse poem.

I love how the backstory evelve in fully gameable content without losing any vibes in the process

I love the tragic backstory you came up with. Also after reading the other reviews, I'm in favor of the cryopod. In my mind it fits Appendix N really well. 
Although it's been mentioned a lot: The art and layout is outstanding. 

There's something really special about this adventure. A fairy tale dipped in eldritch horror with a melancholic filling. They cover and art is all-around excellent (thanks for that included art too!). Good layout as well.. The intro page could use a little tightening up, but it lays enough of a foundation to get things going for the GM. The different components in the mansion are all well-integrated and sensible. I wonder what happens if a party can get up to the second floor by bypassing the crystal. I like the nice little touches of personal items and history that is embedded throughout the different parts of the house. For a system-agnostic adventure, it shouldn't be too difficult to get this going for a GM.

The initial wolf-knight encounter is kind of glossed over. It almost seems like a recommendation instead of a critical beat to breakdown what's happening in the Wizard's mind.

I love the art in this, especially the map! Also nice to see an appearance of the king in yellow bringing some eldritch chaos.

A very handsome little zine here! Great art and a very sharp, clean layout.

Love the concept and the map. Very useable!

You have a nicely detailed map and key, but the map isn't numbered! It's very hard to understand which rooms are which.

The art in this is beautiful and the layout is generally very good, one minor point is I'd put the explanation of what the wolf-knight is above the random table, so we have that context when reading the table. Both the Backstory and the About this Adventure sections could probably be cut down a bit, and in general some of the writing is a bit wordier than necessary.

I agree with the commentator below that this really needs some way of dealing with the Unspeakable One and lifting the curse! There are hints - the tree, the book, the crystals all seem like they might reduce its power if destroyed - but nothing concrete is stated.

This one is great, some fun fairy-tale vibes with a pinch of some eldritch xanthus. The narrative of tragedy, grief and denial  runs through this is really strong and is carried throughout the dungeon rooms and environment. The cover illusatration is great (props to Nomski23). The layout and presentation is clear appealing to look at, some good use of text-frames and box-outs to provide separation and contrast.

The map is detailed and well labelled, it took me a moment to parse where the doors were but it was otherwise great. The prose and text as a whole is solidly-written, no real typos but maybe a few double-spaces here and there? I think you could have probably gotten away with making your room keys less wordy and won a bit of breathing room back, but the usage of bullet points makes helps readability a lot. I think the visual effect for blurring Hastur's name is kind of cool, but I think it overlaps with the other text too much and harms the legibility slightly. 

I think I'd have like a small section about the monsters/creatures/antagonists present with some system-agnostic indications of stats, from a gaming standpoint it might be a bit vague and requires a little bit more prep-work as is. I think having some defined foes would be fun and make it a bit easier to prep (even if it is simply a rough level/hit dice number and "stats as bear -level"informtion). If stat blocks  were included you could probably trim  the About the Adventure section: it isn't a bad inclusion, but it probably could have been replaced with either a singular adventure hook (which would incorporate the first paragraph) or perhaps a small table. 

This module really is compelling though, I can't wait to give it a try, Excellent work!

inside you are two wolfs

I really like this adventure. Very well written and packaged. Good job!

What a beautiful, melancholy adventure! Visually stunning, but also packs a LOT of cool gameplay into a small package. Love the blend of spooky unknowable horror and very human sadness.

I absolutely love this zine. The theme, which is I assume inspired by the Franco-German fairytale circle, is lovely and so fitting to the title. Sprinkled with a namedropping Hastur for Lovecraftian Eldritchness, superb. The beautiful map with the locked doors, ensuring the players “see” everything. The mansion and it’s surrounding, telling a story like all those eerie, bit spooky walking simulators, asking the players to read them without telling everything from the getgo. The visuals, the easiness to transport sich into a system. It’s wonderful.

And because I love it and will totally run it, I will now – unasked – tell you everything I will tweak. Because this was an almost perfect match to me – up to the. Very. Last. Paragraph. So let’s begin with the first paragraph.

The backstory is a bit up and down. One thinks “Oh, fairytale”, then “Oh, family drama”, then “Whoah, that escalated quickly”, then “WTH a cryopod doing here?!?”. Long story short: I’ll ditch the cryopod. Dead wizards can lie in marble tombs and are able to teleport eager adventurers, as well.

My startingpoint won’t be a dungeon with a fight. The players will prepare characters, but they will be children for a few minutes, playing an adventurer party as a game of chicken, delving into an old mausoleum near their village. There will be tension, but no combat. They will turn into their characters after they teleported.

Absolutely nothing to change in the mansion. I have an idea for the book in the library, turning it into a Mimic that reveals itself when they turn they third page just saying “Hastur”… Should be warning enough.

But – for me – there needs to be one big change: based on the story you wrote and for the sake of a twist, this cannot end with a battle against a wolf/knight hybrid in a Shellyian laboratory. It will take a bit of work, more than to be done in a itch-comment, but this has to turn against Hastur, breakting Illaria from him and ending all this: the experiments, the pain, the regret. All this came from Illara’s longing to be loved by her parents by being able to do magic. Because of this she turned to The Old One. We’ll have to make her understand that one does not have to change so others love you. Perhaps going the Disney-route and letting her parentghosts appear (That might be over-doing it).

This might have gotten more ranty than constructive. I’m very invested into your zine already 😉

Good work.

I love everything about this. 

I have a friend who love these kind of sentimental narrative-centric game, he would surely loved this.
I personally like the poem at the end, so short and sweet.

First off, Amazing layout! The writing is great heartfelt prose and I love the touches of eldritch weirdness. 

Excellent.  Love the visual design. The cover and art are fantastic.  Good keys map. Great job!

Beautiful cover, art, map, & layout!

Really liked that the Eldritch elements weren’t exactly hidden, but still required exploration of the part of the PCs to actually be revealed. It’s a shame the Knight & Wolf couldn’t be saved, but the story is better for that

this is so God dang pretty 😳