by S'laira
Legends tell of a giant enchanted hedge maze on the outskirts of the village of Flosdorf. For a couple of drinks, any passing bard will tell you how the monsterous green maze only opens on the night of a full moon (or blue moon, or blood moon, or new moon, depending upon who's telling the story), and how unwary travelers are often lured inside and ensnared by the powerful fairy who tends the maze, known only as The Gardener.
Of course, for a couple of drinks, a bard will tell you his mother was a hamster, so maybe the tales shouldn't be taken all that seriously.
Journey to the village of Flosdorf and discover this strange, unnatural feature of nature for yourself, and if you are patient, skilled, and more than a little lucky, perhaps you'll even come back out from it!
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Escape from the Hedge Maze of Flosdorf is a text-based puzzle game featuring a variety of sexy and terrifying transformations as you attempt to escape from the dangers your curiousness got you into. Although simple on the surface, it will take a keen eye, patience, and some serious puzzle-solving skills to successfully find the way out of the maze.
With 32 different endings (only 3 of which start with "YOU WIN"), this game will change the way you look at life...probably permanently!
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This game features primarily inanimate transformations of various flavors. There are also slave, animal, and monster transformations, as well as some sex scenes.
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1.1.0 adds substantial hint content
1.2.0 adds the Sundial item, which can be used to negate the effects of random events at the cost of closing off certain victory endings (file is now working--a bad publish from Twine corrupted the loader the first time)
If you get stuck, there is a way to receive hints in the game. There are 12 hints in total, all accessible in the same place if the conditions to reveal them are met.
The game is functionally complete, but if bugs are found I'll be fixing them, so I'm keeping it in "Beta" for now.
1.0.0 Initial release
1.0.1 Fixed a bug causing the bench to register as changed when it had not been
1.1.0 Added significant numbers of hints to the part of the game where you can find hints. Further fixed the bug causing the bench to register as changed when it wasn't. Hopefully it will stay dead this time.
1.2.0 Added a time manipulation item to help avoid the negative effects of certain random events. Be warned, though, use of the item may cut off certain victory paths!
Needs Save Points. Desperately.
I get that there can be some difficulty with this kind of "puzzle" stuff, but having to restart all the way from the beginning every time you die, and being explicitly forbidden from saving, or even going back in most cases, makes it simply frustrating. But the real problem is that half of the events that kill you are random, which is why this game NEEDS saving. Otherwise it's just about luck.
The actual content and premise is really neat, but this game absolutely needs saving.
A waste of time that could have been good.
The transformation content is pretty nice, but trying to see anything but the earliest bad ends is an exercise in frustration because not only do you have to do the puzzles correctly, there are recurring timed events where you have to pray the RNG doesn't decide to screw you over. And if it does? No saving, no checkpoints, no back button. Fuck you, go back to the beginning, do it all over.
The author obviously saw all the complaints about the RNG, because they patched in an item that negates the random events, but they made it pointless because using it locks you out of certain endings.
I can only assume the author's true fetish is orgasm denial, which they've inflicted on the game's players by making victory an infuriating RNG slog.
I honestly don't like calling this sort of thing a puzzle. To me, a puzzle has some kind of logic you can follow that will direct you towards a solution. This game is nothing but trial and error. You just bumble around trying to interact with everything until you find some kind of order that gets you a result. There's no reason to assume anything does what it does, and there's certainly little in the way of justification for WHY anything does what it does.
If you're interested in a collection of "bad ends" which are mostly just inanimate transformations, then by all means just wander around until you fail in some new way and see what you get our of it.
I'm not exactly disappointed I spent my time on it but I can't say I recommend it at all.
Needs save points or ways to make it easier every time a game over is experienced. The game feels a bit too hard otherwise...
The latest update doesn't work and opens a blank page when I try it. It might be an error on my end, though I tried redownloading it with no luck.