Ad Verbum

Ad Verbum is a video game in the adventure genre originally released in 2000. It is currently playable on DOS.

Ad Verbum, by Nick Montfort, is a masterpiece of wordplay with more puns than you can shake a stick at.

The game's puzzles are so clever and well-executed that the plot takes a back seat. The game is basically a treasure hunt: your goal is to collect various objects from different rooms. All of the puzzles involve numerous variations of clever word games, which means you'll need a strong knowledge of the English language to win without looking at the clues. However, those whose native language is not English will enjoy the game immensely. English is my second language, and I was amazed at how clever the game is.

There are, for example, descriptions of entire rooms that start with the same letter. To interact with anything in those rooms you need to type commands that start with the same letter. In a room 'E', for example, you will need to type EXAMINE instead of LOOK, and ENTER instead of PASS. Imagine writing a 200-word paragraph in which every word starts with an 'E', and then multiply that by the number of puzzles you'll have to devise, and the response to player commands, and you'll appreciate the amount of work and ingenuity that went into the game.

Overall, Ad Verbum is to puzzle-oriented IF what Ramses is to story-oriented IF: great games that excel at what they are, and never pretend to be anything else. If you like puzzles, especially English-related ones, Ad Verbum will keep you busy for hours, and you'll be sad to see it end. Infocom, Nord and Bert's excellent punishment game pales before the mighty pen of Nick Montfort. Watch out for the tricky difficult door ;)

Two thumbs up!

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.