How to play

What you need

A copy of the game, installed on your computer. Amber Folio asks for the folder that the installation created — the whole folder, as the installer left it. It works out the rest: which program to start, and how the game should be set up.

The games page shows where each title is sold. Most are sold as part of a collection.

Handing over the folder

Hand over the folder the game was installed into, or any folder around it — the one your store made for the game, or on Steam the whole collection. The player finds the game inside it, your saved games with it (on GOG the ones GOG keeps in the cloud too), and the Adventurer’s Journal if it is there, which it starts reading straight away. Another game’s saves in the same folder are left alone. If there are two copies of the game in it, the player asks which one you play.

It cannot look for your copy by itself: a web page only ever sees the files you hand it. On Windows the player has a button for each store that copies where the store installs to by default and opens the folder dialog, so all that is left is to paste it in.

A zip or a .tar.gz of that folder works as well: choose it or drop it instead of the folder. If it is on Dropbox, paste its share link into the player and your browser downloads it straight from Dropbox — it never passes through this site. On an iPhone, an iPad or an Android phone there is no folder to choose, so one of these two is the way in. A journal that is not in the folder can be handed over the same way, then or later: Files on the player’s toolbar has a place for it. Once the game is running there, a keyboard drawn for it comes up beside the picture by itself, with only the keys the game uses; Keyboard on the player’s toolbar shows or hides it on any screen.

Your copy is kept privately in your browser, so you hand the folder over once rather than on every visit. It is never uploaded anywhere. A browser can clear its storage when it is short of space, and clearing site data always will, in which case you hand it over again. Installing the site as an app, from the browser’s menu or with Add to Home Screen on an iPhone or iPad, makes the browser likelier to keep it. Your saves are worth a copy of their own: see your saves, in your hands.

What the game saves is kept in your browser too, beside your copy, and put back the next time you play. It stays there: nothing is copied anywhere else. Keep your own copies of any saves you care about: Saves on the player’s toolbar exports them.

Supported versions

Amber Folio supports the release of each game that is sold today, and its enhancements are made for that release. For Pool of Radiance that is the release sold today on GOG and Steam, or a third-party repack of it. For Curse of the Azure Bonds that is the release sold today on Steam, or the release sold today on GOG.

If your copy is a different release, the player says so and offers to play it anyway, with the enhancements unavailable: they are made for one release, and one that might misfire is worse than none.

The extras in the box

Some games came with things beside the disks — a code wheel to answer the copy-protection question, a journal to read when the game tells you to. If they are in your game folder, or in your store’s folder beside it, they come along with it. What the player does with each is on the game’s own page; for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds that is under its enhancements.