Trilby's Notes is the third game released, but second in order of game chronology. It stands as a true sequel to the events of 5 Days a Stranger, and a prequel to the events of 7 Days a Skeptic.
The story follows the gentleman thief Trilby to an isolated Welsh hotel, seeking the idol which wreaked supernatural havoc in the first game. Believing that there is more to the story of DeFoe Manor than he had previously thought, Trilby wishes to destroy the idol once and for all, but is suddenly caught up in a series of strange and gruesome events at the hotel that cause him to start shifting randomly between two parallel worlds.
Trilby's Notes also provides a link from 7 Days a Skeptic as most of the featured characters share last names with those on the spaceship, suggesting a shared bloodline.
Trilby's Notes was nominated for 9 AGS Awards and won 4 (Best Game, Best Story, Best Animation and Best Non-player character).
Trilby's Notes is superficially similar to Croshaw's previous efforts, but instead of the previous games' point-and-click interfaces it instead relies on a text parser and keyboard directional control, in the style of early Sierra Entertainment games such as King's Quest I-IV.
The special edition includes the usual author commentary and an extended version of the ending scenes. The SE also comes with the soundtrack in midi and mp3 formats, and a Word file containing the complete text of two of the Books of Chzo, fictional religious texts within the series.
Croshaw has stated that the game was intended as both a form of continued high-level experimentation with the AGS engine and a complete product within itself. Trilby's Notes is the most graphically violent of the four games, an effect achieved with an extremely modest pixel-palette. Croshaw said of his main character's rather basic graphical representation: " is not shaded at all because he was drawn after the GFW period when I realized that most people didn't give a toss and just wanted a fun game."
Read more about this topic: 5 Days A Stranger