AGON - The Mysterious Codex (Trilogy)

We just finished all 4 available chapters of Agon: The Mysterious Codex. The first three chapters were released as a unit back in 2006, while Chapter 4 came out in 2008. Chapter 1--London: This takes place late on a rainy night in the offices and storage rooms of the British Museum. It is the early 1900s. The game features 360 degree motion, and the graphics are actually pretty decent. We played the game on Steam. Players must use books, maps, telephone, typewriter and make a guard fall asleep. Though short, this was a good opening segment and teaches the player how to move and handle objects. There is an inventory and it will grow quite large by the end. Chapter 2--Lapland: This chapter takes place in an arctic winter environment. I recommend playing it in the summer! We first arrive at a very small and very lonely railroad station in the middle of nowhere. The stationmaster is passed out drunk in bed. We must get the stove going and solve some major puzzles, a few of which are impossible without walkthru help. The puzzles tend to become quite nasty very quickly. Solving a Morse Code puzzle (make no spelling mistakes!) playing an organ to call a reindeer taxi, and reading more letters all take time. Overall, I liked the atmosphere in this section, but was glad to finally move on to the small nearby village. There are 3 points of interest in the village, the main one being the tavern. We must get the village girl on our side, so it's time to cure her sick dog. She will eventually lead us to another reindeer taxi, and we are off into the cold and snowy wilderness. The final part of the game again becomes a bit nasty, but problems were solvable without a walkthru. Often here the most difficult part was locating things, so hunt carefully for inventory. The very final puzzle in all chapters 2-4 is playing a different board game against an opponent. I had to lose about a dozen times here before I finally won, triggering the next chapter. All in all this was a fun segment, much longer than the first chapter. Again I liked the segment, though some of the train station puzzles were simply too hard to work out logically. Chapter 3--Madagascar: On to the tropics and time to get warm again! We arrive (after a lot of reading) on a tropical beach in the morning, later returning near sunset. In between we visit a hostile native village and two sites withing the jungle: a cemetery and a tree house homestead. Here there is one inhabitant, an old sailor. His companion lies in the cemetery. The story is quite rich and it takes a while to get all of it. Again some puzzles can be solved through logic, though some cannot. We got through the cemetery one okay, but the telescope puzzle was simply too bizarre to even try to solve. At the end of it all (there is a tidal cave which is pretty cool) comes another board game, again taking me about a dozen times before I finally won. That ended the original game, with more chapters being promised. There should have been thirteen altogether, but alas only 4 were ever made. Final score for the first 3 chapters: 80%