Afm

Another Fine Mess 1.8 is a graphical adventure by Ray Dunakin, the second game in his Ray's Maze series. Built with the World Builder engine, it sends the player through eerie moors, a desolate battlefield, and an ancient castle, battling bureaucrats, sand pirates, and other monsters across a non-linear web of plots, sub-plots, and puzzles within puzzles.

The Story

The premise is deceptively simple: you are a fortune-seeker chasing treasure through the tangled worlds of Ray's Maze. As exploration deepens, the search pulls you into a layered web of stories where any given location may serve several intersecting plotlines, and where puzzles open up further puzzles rather than terminating in a single solution.

Open World Design

Unlike most World Builder titles of the era, Another Fine Mess is explicitly non-linear. There is no required area order; players move freely between regions, picking up clues, items, and hints in whichever sequence makes sense to them, and can return to old locations as new abilities or knowledge unlock further content.

System Requirements

The game runs on essentially any classic Mac, from a Plus through PowerPC machines under Mac OS 8.6, but its sound code does not work on the Macintosh XL, AV models, or PowerPC systems. Newer Macs may need their Get Info Preferred Memory Size raised if the game freezes on launch.

Shareware and Series Context

Author Ray Dunakin asks a $10 shareware fee and was reachable at RayDunakin@aol.com. Another Fine Mess is bracketed in his catalog by Ray's Maze (its predecessor) and A Mess O' Trouble (its sequel); version 1.8 is the final release, fixing several minor bugs, adding new hints, and making the game "slightly less deadly" than earlier revisions.