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Thanks so much for playing and commenting! Glad you enjoyed it 😄

This was a fun time! I was actually able to solve it without walkthrough or hints (rare for me 😅). Nicely done on the targeted responses for half-right answers.

I'm glad you had fun with it! Love that our entries seem to have that in common (supernatural shenanigans treated matter-of-factly).

So glad you enjoyed it! That was very much my inspiration for this game (walking around old cemeteries for fun!).

Thank you for playing!

Delightful! Some laugh out loud moments. The mirror messages with the mentor, in particular, reminded me of real life communications with certain people 😹

Thank you, and thanks again for all your help!

Thank you so much!! Good thing talent is not a finite resource. 😄

Thank you so much for letting me know! I have uploaded a bug fix. (The bug came up as a result of an edit I had just made!)

Oh, that's great to hear! Thank you for spreading the word!!

Thank you so much for playing and commenting! I hope it's clear that this is a Showcase Entry (developed over months last fall/spring). I definitely couldn't have made this in a week 😅 

Here's a bit of background on this entry (from the author):

Fantasy Opera: The Theater of Memory is an interactive fiction game, originally released last April through the Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction (where it received ribbons for Outstanding Illustrations & Design, Best Customization, and Best Deduction Game) and developed over the months prior. If you enjoy the game, I hope you'll consider checking out the first installment in the series, Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade (voted 7th place in last year's IFComp).

Thanks so much for checking out my showcase entry!

Thank you for these kind comments, Andrew! And especially for giving it a second playthrough to take in more of the story. I'm so glad you found that worthwhile.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game! :)

Thanks so  much for playing and commenting!

Thank you so much!!

So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing.

Thanks so much for playing, and for your kind words! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks so much for playing, and for your kind words! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

Really sorry your first experience with The Gnomish Treasury was cut short! Thanks so much for letting me know about the bug, and the details of what happened. It's very helpful.

It seems you've run into a super specific edge case, which hadn't come up in testing. I was able to recreate the crash under certain conditions that have to do with the bowl or the knife, specifically; and whether they are labeled, which labels are used, and in what order. 

I'm still working on identifying the cause of the bug (neither my browser nor dev environment are offering error messages, and I haven't spotted any issues in my source code).

UPDATE: Alright, the bug is fixed and the game is updated! You should be able to proceed with exactly what you were in the middle of doing.

(That was a tricky one! There were no explicit errors that I could find in the source code. Yet under those very specific conditions, the Inform 7 compiler was getting stuck in a loop trying to print the list. Adjusting the method by which the list was printed did the trick.)

Here's my devlog detailing major updates to the game during the festival period!

Here's my devlog detailing major updates to the game during the festival period!

Thank you so much for playing, and for your comment!

I'm so glad to hear that! Thank you for playing!

Nightmare material, in the sense that it felt like a very realistic nightmare! I really liked the pacing. You packed a lot of distinct, escalating story beats into this short piece.

I really liked your use of first person, past tense narration; it was refreshing to see, and served the tone of the story well. Creepy and poetic!

Lol! 😂 Thank you so much!

Thank you so much!

Super impressive that you implemented this within the LPM time constraints, but even putting that aside the writing and game mechanics were great! (A walkthrough or in-game hinting system could be worthwhile for a post-comp release, but I understand if that was beyond the scope of what you could dedicate to LPM.) I second the comment that your core mechanic could be worthy of a longer game if you want to explore it further.

I've just finished all 3 of your entries, and I think this might be my favorite of the bunch (maybe that's just because I had to check the walkthrough once for the others 😅). I had a seamless experience with this, enjoyed the word puzzles, and the Adventuron interface. Impressive to have implemented these games within the time constraint, graphics aside!

I enjoyed the theme and setting, and the visuals (especially the use of historical photographs) really enhanced the storytelling and sense of atmosphere.

Clever use of the source material!

I like that you took a naturalistic, real-world approach with this story. The realism makes it all the more haunting!

(I may have encountered one very small bug — I wasn't able to visit Miranda's bedroom when clicking the choice; no text appeared and the option disappeared.)

I enjoyed the story, and this game stood out to me for its very interesting player character!

As someone who, through happenstance, has been in proximity to/seen harm done by many such executives (and specifically in the Hamptons, of all places), this one gave me a few chuckles!

The gameplay was thoroughly engaging, and the attention to detail was great! Very immersive world-building. I have a pretty low tolerance for body horror, but glad I pushed through for this 😆

Really charming and nicely put together! You had me at "game within a game themed around my chosen costume" 😂

Smart, charming writing and a fun concept. Loved seeing how the theatrical theme (and scripts) drove the game mechanics! Naturally I was spamming the "think" option and resorted to hints just a couple times to speed along the playthrough, but even without the hints it felt quite solvable (aided significantly by the handy highlights and symbols in the mini-map).

Thanks, Emery!

Thank you so much!