I'm taking Nicked's word for it that this is a <1,000,000 units, because it sure as hell doesn't feel like it. This mission is massive, and utterly fantastic. It sees you go from nothing to so many items scrolling your inventory becomes more of a pain, it has Garrett doing magic, Garrett doing mad science, Garrett doing horticulture, Garrett wielding a frying pan, a cult, horrifying monsters... It's spectacular.

There's so much I could say about this FM but I really want people to play it for themselves so I'll limit myself to a few main points here:

1. There is a LOT of attention to little details in this FM. The custom dialogue has an attached subtitle file, which I was VERY surprised to see, and in the first three minutes Garrett is given access to two infinite portable light sources, which are crucial in a mission that involves looking for things on the ground in the dark. The map is not only fully automapped, but fills out as you explore, because of course Garrett wouldn't know where he was but would want to write it down! Part of the mission involves collecting flowers and mushrooms from the forest floor, and because the thing you need them for is indefinitely extensible, the flora and fungi grow back over time and are confined to specific zones so they can be logically searched for.

2. A great deal of thought has been put into WHY things are the way they are, and this is well communicated to the attentive player. Each time I encountered something that felt like a bug or mistake, after surmounting the problem I then encountered a (either explicit or implicit) justification as to why that quality was intended and fit the diegesis. This does a great deal to make the world of the FM feel properly alive.

3. Nicked has obviously designed this FM with a view to one of those slippery golden geese of game design- giving the player opportunities to feel clever. I'm delighted to report that it works again and again- I'm not even done with this FM because I know there are two whole other objectives I didn't get because I couldn't find the secrets that trigger them, and I know this because of the detective work you as the player are allowed to do very early on to figure out what you might later be asked to do. Not once does this FM condescend to its participant and I adore it for that.

4. There's rather a great deal of custom model and monster work in this FM and all of it is interesting and, dare I say, engaging. (Mostly terrifying. A lot of it is ghoulishly horrible and without giving too much away: there is a custom monster in this FM that advances towards you in the exact manner of a Ray Harryhausen effect, an animation that must have taken some considerable difficulty to get right and is utterly gorgeous.)

5. The atmosphere in this FM is always utterly divine and spot on. The horror area feels scary, the homely areas feel homely and cozy, the guardedly menacing area feels guardedly menacing, and the "hidden" area feels like you've come across a proper secret space. The starting area does a fantastic job of being a menacing maze while it's required to be, and then immediately not being that any more as soon as the narrative moves on. It's just sublime.

For criticism, in the pursuit of this review not JUST being vague effusive praise, I will offer these two small morsels:

1. There is a small room in this FM with two human guards, one hopelessly inattentive, and one hyper-alert and highly strung. The why of them being like this can be discerned through the power of implicit storytelling as soon as one has defeated them and entered the room, but my criticism is that alertboy might be *so* highly strung it strays into the domain of telepathically divining Garrett's presence and location the second he puts an atom over the door's threshold. The solution I had to resort to involved throwing a flash bomb directly into his face to get him to gear down for a second, and even that took several tries.

2. There's something funny about how mines work (or rather don't work) in this FM. You're given a fair few mines over the course of the mission, and the ability to make more, but they seem to function erratically and unreliably, and they make unexpected noises when arming. I think one of the custom enemies is supposed to be able to walk over mines without setting them off, but I found that all three in its faction could in fact do this, including the human variety, which made setting traps difficult and fraught as an experience. So don't rely on mines.

But these are quibbles. Play The Turning of the Leaves. I implore you. You will love it.