All That Shimmers...

Summary

A young witch has moved to your normally quiet town of Dimpleford and something is brewing in that cauldron of hers, something EVIL.

Can a mild-mannered school teacher with an unusual ability discover her weakness and defeat her before it is too late?

Description

This adventure was written by Andrew Apted for PunyComp 2025. It was originally planned for Ectocomp 2025, and hence it has a light-hearted spooky theme, but no horror elements.

This game is quite old-school, it often does what the player says even when their action makes the game unwinnable. However, it is not possible to die in this game, and nobody can be killed either.

There is a time limit in this game, though it is very generous. One strategy is to explore the town for a while, examining things and talking to people, then restart and try to solve the puzzles. The command "TIME" will show the current time, useful when the status bar is unavailable.

Credits

Created by Andrew Apted.

The cover picture is based on a public domain photo of a church (sourced from Wikimedia Commons), cropped and modified by the author, with some some text added on top.

Big thanks to my testers: improvmonster, Dark Star, kqr, Allyson Gray.

Thanks also to the people who answered my questions on the forums, especially Fredrik Ramsberg.

Apologies to G. K. Chesterton.