Welcome To The Haunted Church

Haunted, decrepit churches are a cliche, but this particular cliche still has the power to frighten this gamer. Day 4 of the The Lost Crown has brought the ever-curious Nigel Danvers to Ulcombe Church. From the very first day, the denizens of Saxton have told Nigel that "not all is what it seems." What is real in the story? Clues pop up intermittently, hinting that Nigel may have left reality far behind when he woke up on the train from London to SedgeMarsh. What year is it? Is that tear in the scenery a trick of the light, or is this all just a fantasy?

The end is approaching, but I'm tempting fate too much already by the small amount that I've played so far: Mike is traveling, and there's no way that I'll finish the game alone tonight!

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Falling into a dream

Fans of Ragnar Tornquist's 1999 adventure game, The Longest Journey , won't be disappointed in Dreamfall . This time around, April Ryan, our intrepid adventurer from the first game, is joined by the mysterious assasin Kian and the rudderless, but loyal Zoe Castillo. You will be able to play as all three characters throughout the game. As you follow the metaphysical and literal journeys each of these characters make, you begin to unearth the secret world that ties dreams to reality. Tornquist is a master storyteller with enough imagination to fill two worlds -- the futuristic and the fantastic. As you shuttle between Stark and Arcadia, you begin to catch glimpses of how the two worlds are tied together even as you occaisionally stumble upon a vague inbetween world that may hold the answers to the strange forces that threaten to unravel both worlds. The gameplay is pretty straightforward, and the puzzles are much more intuitive than The Longest Journey (not a...

Calling to me

Newfound Lake, New Hampshire, photo by Merlina McGovern Up at the lake. Calm. Peaceful. My mother-in-law has a fridge magnet with a brown bear in a red and white striped swimsuit. It says: The lake is calling, and I must go. In the hot, sticky months of summer, the lake calls to us. Newfound lake, with it's fried seafood shacks and crowded summer homes at its foot and happy boaters zooming up and down its length. (There are muddy undercurrents here in the lakes region, though, with drugs, socio-economic battles, association frustrations -- all topics for a different kind of blog, not one where we're chasing dragonflies!) The night we drove up, fat, dark rainclouds boiled over until rain splattered everything, big boomers echoing across the mountains. The thunder, lightening, and rain prepped and cleansed everything for a clear and dry day. Not really a boating or swimming day, but a beautifully clean crystalline summer day on the lake. When you walk into the lake on o...

Day of the Dead

Dia de los Muertos figurine, photo by Merlina McGovern It's the day after Halloween, and there's something mournful about taking our Halloween decorations down after the parade of tiny trick-or-treaters have all gone home. I traveled a bit this month, so didn't get to partake of a lot of fall fun, like apple picking, haunted hay rides, or visits to the Topsfield fair. Nothing especially spooky about Manila, which is where I was traveling, in October (well, that is, if you don't count the double whammy of landing just as super typhoon Lando was hitting and feeling the rolling tremors of an earthquake during a meeting). But, with my collection of Dia de los Muertos figurines, there's always a bit of Halloween in the McGovern household, even after the ghosts have all flitted away. The photo in this post is a wedding set crafted by the same artist, Javier Benites, as a figurine highlighted in a previous post. They look so dapper in all their macabre finery, don...

Chasing Dragonflies

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