Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha / alyshkalia
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Lovelorn letters... with a twist, May 16, 2024The first thing that struck me about this game was the UI. It’s gorgeous! The softly textured main background, the handwriting fonts (with choices so you can pick one that you find most readable), the paper-like background for the text. It’s the perfect aesthetic for the story; there’s even a little quill you click to continue!
The story itself has a compelling start, with Isabelle having suddenly had to leave her home and return to the village she thought she’d left forever, now separated from her lover, Olympia, and pouring out her longing for reunion in her letters. What exactly happened is revealed slowly in bits and pieces (although on a second replay, when I chose a different option early on, I found that the explanation came together more quickly), and it was satisfying to put the pieces together, figuring out Isabelle’s background and why she had to suddenly leave the city.
Sometimes I didn’t feel like I was entirely following the ups and downs of the relationship as time and Isabelle’s letters went on, as we only get Isabelle’s side of the correspondence, but the tension between the two, the strain that the inciting incident and the distance was putting on their relationship—the way the distance allowed mistrust and suspicions to creep in, both jumping to conclusions about each other—was gripping to read and made me invested in the conclusion. I was less interested in the external plot going on around Isabelle, though, and because the ending focused in on that plotline, it fell a little flat for me.
Two other notes, first on the interactivity. I can’t help but compare this to other epistolary IF works I’ve played, and unlike in First Draft of the Revolution or Something Blue, in DJL the player/protagonist isn’t choosing what pieces of information to share with Olympia, or what spin to put on them; rather, you’re deciding which of the offered choices is actually true. Or at least, that was my interpretation after multiple playthroughs, and I felt almost like this gave me too much power over the story; things that felt like small choices in the moment ended up being major shapers of the way events played out, in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
Finally, I know this was translated from French under a time crunch, and that showed a bit, with some confusing phrasing or word mix-ups. This wasn’t a major distraction, but it made the reading experience a bit bumpy at times and created another barrier to my feeling like I’d fully grasped everything. I’m glad the translation was finished in time for Spring Thing, though, as I enjoyed the story and had fun playing through it!
Left me a bit lost, May 16, 2024I was drawn into this one by the stylish UI and the character-focused setup, immediately interested in our three MCs’ circumstances and their relationship. Their teasing, comfortable dynamic was fun to read about, especially with the sense that these were some precious, stolen moments in an otherwise strictly regimented life. However, the introduction to these characters’ lives doesn’t match up with what actually plays out in the story; the setup gets quickly got thrown out the window, especially when the cozy domestic moment we start out witnessing becomes an urgent mission.
As other reviews have mentioned, I think the confusion definitely comes in part from this being the third in a series. Not having played the preceding games, I couldn’t follow what was going on with the mission, completely lacking a frame of reference for it. This ended up creating a major disconnect between me and the characters, which was the opposite of my experience at the beginning, when I thought I understood what they might be thinking and feeling.
A final issue is that most of the game’s passages contain two types of links—ones that lead to brief asides and return you to the passage you came from when you're done, and ones that advance to the next main-text passage. However, both types of links are colored and styled exactly the same, and the game has no “back” button, meaning that if you inadvertently miss an aside, there’s no way to rewind and see it. While I was able to crack the code as to which type of link is which—single-word links are asides, multi-word links advance—signaling the difference in a more obvious way would have been a better design choice.
Well-crafted but hard!, April 9, 2024This game has a very fun premise and voice; unfortunately, though, I had to guess-the-verb my way through it, at one point resorting to asking someone else who’d played for a hint because I was completely stumped (and the in-game hints didn’t have anything for that particular situation). After that I made some progress on my own, but ultimately turned to the in-game hints quite a bit. In retrospect, I could see how the things I got stuck on were clued, so I think this was a case of me just not being as clever as the game required! There were a few small implementation errors that I found, but overall it's a well-done game with excellent writing, fun puzzles utilizing unique, world-appropriate objects, and a great comedic character in Captain Booby. Maybe just a liiiittle more cluing for those of us who might otherwise (Spoiler - click to show)(fail to) struggle.
Fun proof-of-concept, April 9, 2024This was another game that had me quite confused at first—I couldn't for the life of me understand what I was supposed to be doing (Spoiler - click to show)if I couldn't use verbs! After some flailing I turned to the in-game hints, which fortunately clearly explained what was going on. From that point on it became a fun and unique little exercise. It's got an unusual parser game mechanic, and I'm impressed by the coding it must have taken to make it all work. The story was cute too; I liked the reveal and that there were multiple possible endings.
A downside is that it was very short—by the time I felt like I’d gotten the hang of the mechanic and was gearing up to do more complex things with it, the game was over! So it felt a bit more like a proof of concept than a full game, but if the author ever did make a longer game with this conceit, I would be first in line to play.
Thanks, but..., April 7, 2024I found this game disorienting at first, to the point that I almost stopped playing. I was confused about both the situation and the location (and still am about the latter to some degree, even after re-reading---I'm not sure where the chapel, school, and volleyball courts all are in relation to each other... or why there's a stage outside?). So initially I was more frustrated than intrigued---but when I read on I discovered that there's a good reason for the disorientation, and suddenly it became quite compelling.
Unfortunately, the story didn't live up to its promise for me; I never got enough of a sense of the wider world to understand the stakes for the NPCs, and they weren't developed enough for me to be invested in their fates. I didn't understand why (Spoiler - click to show)they became fixated on the PC after discovering the journals; there was an escalation there that I couldn't see a reason for. I also never felt much for/about the PC. (Spoiler - click to show)Her circumstances reminded me of the film *Memento*, but what makes that movie so good IMO is that the protagonist has a goal that he's deeply passionate about. Here, the PC has no goal beyond maintaining her status quo---and she is able to achieve that very easily.
I also had some quibbles about the writing; the dialogue was stilted at times, and the tense randomly switched between past and present. Finally, it would be nice if there was a "restart" button at the end; as-is, in order to replay you have to close and re-open the game.
I do feel like there's something interesting to be said about gender in the game---the PC is a woman, (Spoiler - click to show)as was her former lover, and the sole female NPC in the story has a different fate than the two male ones. I'll have to stew on that aspect some more...
An octopus nestled in sweaters!, April 7, 2024This is a cute game! I've never played a game with an octopus PC before, and my favorite aspect was the descriptions, which paint such delightful pictures as an octopus snuggled up in a drawer full of sweaters and an octopus sitting on a window ledge high above the city. "You're splayed out on the hardwood floor" is just perfect too. I also thought the plot was well done; your goal is to get your owner to move back out of her boyfriend's apartment, and I wondered how I might possibly accomplish that until it became clear that (Spoiler - click to show)her boyfriend is cheating on her, and thus my goal was to expose him.
I did have some struggles, mostly notably with the faucets as Mike already pointed out in his review. I also thought (Spoiler - click to show)opening the window latch with the plunger was a bit far-fetched; I don't think that would actually work IRL, and from the setup described I would have thought my arms would be able to reach it without issue. (Also, minor quibble, but octopus' limbs are actually arms, not tentacles!) It also got a bit old having to return to my tank every so often--I liked the realism of this, but I wish the game would've had me automatically drop everything I was carrying when I tried to get in, so that I wouldn't have had to type "enter tank. drop all. enter tank."
I had a little trouble with the endgame, too. Partly because I had completely failed to (Spoiler - click to show)examine myself in detail, so I missed that I could squirt ink until I turned to the hints for help with the clothesline--that one's definitely on me. But I also had to use the tip from Mike's review for getting the winning ending; (Spoiler - click to show)having to close the bottom drawer seemed pretty unintuitive, and I wasn't sure why it mattered that I was out of my tank at that point---I would have thought the presence of a stranger's underwear would take precedence. So overall I found it an enjoyable little game, just with a few hiccups along the way.
Satisfying mystery with a few rough edges, April 4, 2024Having enjoyed the author’s *Last Vestiges* in last year’s IF Comp, I was happy to see another mystery game from them! This one is done in Twine rather than Inform, which allowed for some nice features, like a “case file” page documenting the evidence you’ve collected and pop-up notifications letting you know when analysis results are ready. The latter was a nice way of making it feel like time was passing in the game world and of ensuring that not too much information was dispensed at once.
Some aspects of the UI didn’t work as well for me; once I had all the analysis results, that section of the case file became overwhelming, so I would have liked to see it divided up somehow (whether with subsections or perhaps a sub-page). I also didn’t feel that the stock images representing the different locations and actions added much, as they were too generic to provide meaningful flavor.
Writing-wise, the tone was a bit odd, with the PC making some unjustified assumptions early on ((Spoiler - click to show)really, we never have any reason to suspect there was foul play), which didn’t fit with the otherwise realistic nature of the game. In contrast, the NPC dialogue was rather flat, and I wished there had been more depth to the interview segments (at least with the deceased’s son).
As far as gameplay, investigating the apartment felt somewhat lawnmower-y, and I would have liked if visited and unvisited links were distinguished with different colors. Seeking out evidence does get more complex later on, though, as new information opens new avenues of questioning and there are things you have to look up via keywords. The most fun part to me was once I had all the evidence and could start constructing a theory about what happened. Reviewing the various pieces of evidence and making connections between them made me feel like I really was solving a mystery. And when I saw how granular the game wanted me to be in describing my conclusions, I went over it all again before committing, because I was really invested in getting it right—and it was very satisfying when I did!
A polished adventure, April 3, 2024This game hooked me with the premise and vibes on the Spring Thing page, and it definitely delivered! I was drawn in right away by the lovely presentation, with a fun old-fashioned font for the title screen and pleasant spring-like colors. (The UI is well done throughout, with in-game documents set off with different fonts/colors.) The beginning clearly establishes the PC’s goal, and then it’s up to you to get to work accomplishing it!
This is a Twine game with a world model, so there are various locations you can visit and items you can try using in different situations. I enjoyed the puzzlely elements, which were simple enough that they didn’t slow down the story’s momentum. The game also balanced imbuing the choices with a sense of stakes (at one point I certainly thought I’d messed up and was in for a “game over”!) and leaving room for experimentation. The worldbuilding was fun (especially the details of the fae embassy), and the writing suits the PC in a way that often made me smile—e.g., “Your heart lifts at the sound, like a string of pearls from around a rich person’s neck.” It’s altogether a very polished work.
A personal quibble is the selectable gender (of both the PC and the LI). I'd assumed based on the characters' names and the LGBT tag that they were both women, and "lady thieves" seemed like a very fun premise, a la Lady Thalia, so I was disappointed to find that their genders were blank slates. In cases like this, where gender is the only facet of the character the player gets to choose and where it has no effect on the game beyond what pronouns and labels get used in the text, I’d always prefer to have characters that the author wrote with pre-established genders (or lack thereof) in mind, because those characters tend to feel more real to me.
On to some more mechanical things, in the latter half of the game, once you’ve (Spoiler - click to show)entered Fairy, there's much less autonomy in where to go or what approach to take, so it felt much more on rails. I also found it odd that the game didn’t acknowledge some of the information the PC (Kit) finds—(Spoiler - click to show)when you read Aubrey’s journal she all but says that she’s in love with Kit, but Kit doesn't react or acknowledge that in any way. Same with the letter to Aubrey that starts “Dear Sister”—despite this clear indication, Kit doesn't seem to know that the letter-writer is Aubrey’s sibling. Finally, I would have liked to learn more about Kit’s backstory and motivations, as they remained largely a mystery throughout, and as mentioned above I always love a richly detailed character!
Use fingers on keyboard, March 24, 2024I played this game because it was the only entry in UseComp, and I was curious what gameplay would be like with "use" as the only verb. It turned out to be... mostly annoying, to be honest. This is a short game with a brief plot and brief descriptions, but having to type "use eyes on [noun]" every time I wanted to examine something made it feel much more convoluted than it was, and got old pretty fast. Nothing particularly clever was done with the limitation, nor was any in-game reason given; it was just a straight-up reframing of every standard command with "use" instead.
The best part to me was the mini mystery and the architecture theme (the plot is (Spoiler - click to show)finding and freeing the trapped ghost of Sir Christopher Wren, who the architecture-obsessed former owner of the old house you're exploring had summoned).
A sonnet subverted, March 21, 2024This is a short little game with nice styling. I enjoyed the setup—with several entangled relationships at a single’s Valentine’s Day party, some sort of drama is bound to go down… It’s a very effective use of Amanda's “reverse a poem” seed, with the dramatic longing of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 128” recast to a modern-day setting where the PC is able to hit on his hot, married, harpsichord-playing acquaintance the moment he’s alone with her.
The game has some nice mechanics; informational text on the various characters is given via dialogue box pop-ups (although one issue with these is that, while the game lets you increase the font size—which is good, because the default is quite small—the text within the dialogue boxes doesn’t change.) The story is divided into parts (poetically called “first quatrain,” etc.), and at the end of each you can either continue the game or restart from the beginning of that part.
This is especially handy once you reach the final quatrain. Up to this point the game is mostly linear, but once the climax hits there are many possible variations. This is where the game really excels at reversing the poem, as the sheer existence of so many possible endings subverts the poem’s near-devout obsession with its subject. While there’s clearly only one outcome that would satisfy the poem’s speaker, in the game you might (Spoiler - click to show)get cozy with Aline, the object of your affections, OR end up kissing your friend Henry, OR reject Aline after she kisses you. Even if you do take the opportunity to get it on with Aline, the last line of that ending is, “it’s hard to see this bringing lasting joy. But for now, it’ll do.”.
Also, it was just fun to see how differently things could go within those few minutes of the story!
A fun DM sim, March 18, 2024This game is a great implementation of Pinkunz’s “AD&D” seed, with a supernatural twist that adds another layer of charm to the “friends playing D&D” setup. I love this kind of game (social resource management? social roguelikes?), and I imagine that it’s tricky to make, so kudos to E. Joyce for continually pulling it off!
The setup is compelling; the PC is a newbie DM with anxiety who’s running her first game for a group of people she mostly doesn’t know very well (all of whom, including her, are neurodivergent). This requires a balancing act between accommodating your own needs and those of the players, figuring out their personalities as you go along and guessing at how best to engage them or help them feel comfortable. Your girlfriend is also a player, and you need to navigate your interactions with her as well—do you tell her when her backseat-DMing bugs you, or just grin and bear it?
I always found there to be a good variety of choices, without an obvious “best” one, and after failing to successfully finish the session on my first playthough, I enjoyed replaying to try for the best outcome. After achieving it I still replayed a few more times to hunt down the other “failure” endings. Often in this type of game I find collecting all the endings as fun as winning!
I do have two bits of critique, one being that the contrast between the text and the background isn’t great on light mode (dark mode is much better, except for the links). The other is regarding the way you can check in to see how engaged or disengaged the players are; “Look around the table to see how everyone is doing” is something you can do any time, but I didn’t clock the purpose of it right away, and sometimes its description of what someone was doing contradicted what the passage text had just said.
Despite those quibbles, this game is a treat that I certainly recommend!
Trenchant, March 17, 2024This game is dark and heavy (mind the content warnings!)---it's not a feel-good game by any means, but it is very, very good. Charm has done an excellent job combining the three seeds the game takes inspiration from into a cohesive and meaningful story.
First, I'll quickly mention the UI, which is well done. Color-coding differentiates links that add more text to the current page from links that advance the story; website and chat-log text mimics those format; and the page backgrounds have different colors and occasional light animation that subtly punctuates the text.
Now, on to the content...
(Spoiler - click to show)The protagonist, who I'll mostly refer to as "you" because the game is in second person, feels like a recognizable character type---neurodivergent, unemployed, isolated, lonely, listless, and self-loathing. You subsist on energy drinks, barely bothering to eat, and constantly put yourself down in your thoughts. You're desperate for connection of any sort, needing someone to accept you, to love you. Which makes you the perfect target for this promise by the latest crypto fad:
> ***Community Awaits.*** Our user base is thousands strong. Once you buy in, you will have access to our private Discord...
There isn't a choice for the player here; the protagonist will always buy in. Having been cruelly bullied by an online community in the past, you now know to be careful---not to vet the community, but to shape yourself into whatever you need to be to fit in.
As you prepare to craft your intro message, you reach the end of your energy drink supply and are given the choice to ignore your thirst or settle for water, which you hate. If you choose the latter...
> the tap begins to belch out brackish water, with little solid pieces floating in it. ... The water itself is murky, somewhere between brown and black[.]
Despite how disgusting this sounds, this is another point at which the player has no choice---you must drink the mold-infested water.
> You're prepared for it to taste awful, but it's actually the sweetest, most decadent syrup you've ever had. ... You have been missing this all your life.
And there's the game's central metaphor. The protagonist is an isolated person clutching desperately at whatever community will have them, no matter how ugly, and in their desperation they're even willing to embrace the ugliness, to unite with it, in order to feel like they belong. Because belonging, feeling wanted and loved, is a need just as much as water is.
As your crypto journey continues, you also find no food in the house but a moldy apple, which you've given the choice to eat or not. The mold situation escalates; it begins whispering to you, telling you you're special and deserving of love. The crypto situation escalates too---you're suddenly rich! But when the currency's value drops dramatically overnight, causing a mass exodus from the community, Xisor, its inventor and the owner of the Discord server, instructs those who remain:
> Find a forum or a messageboard where GlisterCoin has not been mentioned recently. Make a post talking about [it]. ... Link back to the website, bring more people into the fold. Do not engage with replies. Then go look at the sky for a while, and wait for your new family to pour in.
The mold and the community both make promises, but neither actually values you; they just want to use you for their own benefit.
There are three possible endings. You reach one by continually embracing the mold, and in this ending the protagonist heeds Xisor's instructions, posting the message and then going up to the roof. At this point the mold fully takes you over, having used you as an incubator and now bursting out of you so that it can spread---and this makes you happy:
>You feel the beginning of something grand, something larger than you.
>
>You open your arms to welcome it.
As you cease to be, the voice of the mold assures you that you’re loved. Becoming its vessel is how you've found a sense of purpose and belonging for your life.
In contrast, the two other endings both have the protagonist despairing. If you haven't fully embraced the mold, it doesn't have the same effect on you:
>Something in you squirms, trying to convince you that *you are not alone*, but you know that it's a lie.
In this ending, when Xisor's mandate to spread the crypto word comes, you can't bring yourself to fulfill it, and you hate yourself for that, because "you are failing your community". The mold slowly kills you at your desk while it bemoans what you could have been.
In the third ending, the protagonist directly confronts and rejects the mold's whispers, and we see a version of them that experiences a burst of hope:
>You decide here and now to get things under control. Tomorrow, you will hire a cleaning service. Tomorrow, you will go grocery shopping and eat a *real* meal. Tomorrow, you *will* make friends in the community. You will do better. You will *be* better.
The next day, though, the cryptocurrency's crash arrives and sends you plummeting, feeling worse about yourself and your life than before. You commit suicide by jumping off your building's roof, the mold mocking you as you fall.
From an outsider's view, all three endings are bad for the protagonist; either the mold ends them, or their suicidal ideation does. While in the first one they at least go out happy, we're left to wonder how many other people will end up mold-infected as a result of their actions, and how many will be lured into the crypto scheme. The only actual benefit has been to Xisor and the mold.
I don't know what to say to end this except... oof. That's what I call a trenchant commentary.
Unfortunately mechanical, March 3, 2024I've been reading up on the IF Art Show recently, and was particularly interested in playing some of the games (pieces?) from the "portrait" category (besides Galatea, which was one of the first parsers I played). This one... didn't work for me. It does little to capture the personalities of the individual animals (the eponymous Sparky and Boots, a dog and a cat respectively), instead creating a rote mechanical exercise of "feed, pet, throw ball, repeat" (only, more frustrating than that because these actions must be done a certain number of times and in a certain order to make progress). Having a score system seemed antithetical to the spirit of the Art Show, driving me toward completing a goal instead of meaningfully interacting with the subjects--and there wasn't really any meaningful interaction to be had. So unfortunately, for me this fails as both a portrait and a game.
Emotional story with meaningful choices, January 11, 2024This game really hit for me emotionally, partly because it captured some feelings/experiences that I remember from childhood but also because it's just well written and evocative. The magic of a beach vacation, friends you see once a year and don't have any contact with otherwise (us millenials may be the last generation to have that particular experience), uncertainty about the way a friend feels about you... it's all conveyed so well.
As I played through the first time, I completely forgot that there was any state tracking going on, but when I remembered at the end I was impressed by how that aspect worked. There aren't a lot of choices throughout the game; more passages end with a "next page" link than with a choice. But the five or six choices you do have, determining what you said to Caspian at certain moments in several childhood flashbacks, what direction your adult life has gone, and one action you take in the present, subtly interact to result in one of at least three different endings. After playing through the first time and getting a very satisfying, fitting ending, remembering that I'd brought about that ending through my choices made it all the more meaningful.
Playing through several more times revealed that the game is also subtly responsive to your choices throughout, in ways that heighten the emotion. So all in all, this is just what I look for in a narrative game: a good story that the player is able to help shape.
Moody and haunting, January 3, 2024This is a simple game where you play through several different lucid dreams the protagonist has over the course of the night. I enjoyed the descriptions of the dream worlds and their variety, but what really got me about this game was the mood. There's a strong sense of loss as the protagonist continually reflects on how their experience of their lucid dreams has changed: once, they had such control in their dreams that they never wanted to wake up; now, sleep is a source of stress as they deal with insomnia and something like sleep apnea. There are also hints at tension in their marriage caused by these issues. So the game has a pervasive sense of sadness, which I appreciated as an enjoyer of a good melancholy, wistful tone. And there is the possibility of a happier turn at the end.
That's the other thing I found impressive about this game--it's quite polished, with the implementation overall being quite good (I just had a few struggles with (Spoiler - click to show)the rope), and there were a decent amount of non-essential actions/responses coded in, including two different possible endings. A great little game!
Implementation issues, December 31, 2023The implementation in this game was frustrating throughout and made it very rough to play. I was able to finish only by reading the spoilers in MathBrush's review; before that I was hopelessly stuck on how to open the sarcophagus. Some other issues were the game telling me "this painting looks like the other one you saw" when I hadn't yet seen another one, and (Spoiler - click to show)being able to put the fuse in the junction box despite the box being closed and locked. I think this could be an enjoyable escape room game; it just needs to be made more player-friendly.
Fun but a bit bumpy, December 31, 2023This was a fun idea and I enjoyed the "switching between worlds" aspect. Unfortunately, that part became unfun by the end, as I was left with a single multi-step task to do in one of the worlds, but I could only complete one or two steps at a time before being shunted into a different world and having to make my way back to the one I needed to be in. The commands for that task were also unintuitive and somewhat at odds with the rest of the game (e.g., (Spoiler - click to show)while you have to read each piece of text you encounter instead of having "examine" tell you what it says, for the coffee-making task, trying to take the beans out of the roaster doesn't work; you have to type "grind beans," even though the grinder is in a different room).
I think there was also a bug with text firing at the wrong time; at one point, the "score" command was giving me both "Your muscles are ready to spring into action" and "You feel too tired and lethargic to move" at the same time. I also think there must be an intended order to do things in that I didn't follow, because I (Spoiler - click to show)made the coffee last, and got a message pointing me to the gardening tools, but then as I tried to walk to them I woke up and the game ended.
Basically, I think this is a fun premise with some fun gameplay that just needs a bit more polishing to really shine.
Made me laugh, December 28, 2023Having just played (and loved) The Gostak, I looked up other games by the author and found this one. It's a speed IF game, so it's quite short and simple, but even in that small space it had me laughing more than once. Recommended if you're in the mood for a tiny, amusing game!
Fun sequel, December 25, 2023This is a fun follow-up to Advent Door. It's shorter and simpler than that game, but features a different twist on navigation that makes for an enjoyable small puzzle. Again, the brief environmental descriptions, especially given the core mechanic--(Spoiler - click to show)there's a second version of the map that you can enter through a mirror, which seems to be the same place at a much earlier time period--are a highlight.
A very fun little puzzler, December 13, 2023I don't have much more to say than what's in the title--this was a quick game with a clever mechanic that required mapping and doing some careful thinking to figure out how to achieve what I needed, and it was very satisfying when I succeeded! The bits of worldbuilding and descriptions keep it from being too abstract. A nice way to spend a half hour.
An effective argument, December 2, 2023I found this game to be an effective argument that the fear that games may be hiding secret hateful content is silly, because games don't need to do that in order to send ideological messages. While in the accompanying essay the author writes that he "decided to take out all the Nazi stuff," just because the hidden mode is gone (or at least, has been rendered inaccessible via the originally intended method) doesn't mean the game is suddenly perfectly innocent. We're told that the PC took bus 88 to get to their destination, which is Muranowska Square, and our task in the game is to seek out the hiding places of frightened rabbits--which given this context takes on a deeper, more sinister meaning. A child playing this game might never understand or pay attention to these references, but an adult can see that the game is not, as it claims, simply a cute story about bunnies.
This game is an effective illustration that messaging can be baked into games in far more subtle ways than via a "hidden Nazi mode", and for that reason, vetting games for objectionable content is never going to be as simple as glancing over the source code and verifying that it doesn't contain any slurs.
I had fun with this game and found it a lot easier than the prequel, To Sea in a Sieve. But I wanted to note that it contains some insensitive material, with (puzzle spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)Cherokee smudge sticks used to ward off an Egyptian curse. The cursed mummy itself is a tired, rather culturally insensitive trope IMO, and the idea of mystical Native Americans is also based in othering stereotypes. Of course this game is over 20 years old, but I wanted any future players to have a heads up.
Wacky fun, November 20, 2023All the Little Match Girl games are just plain wacky fun. The time/space-hopping, the Metroidvania-ness, and the outlandishness of the premise all make them a delight to play, and LMG4 is no exception. I loved the humor of the parser responses, the vividness and variety of the settings, the construction of the puzzles, the way the various worlds connect to each other, being able to (Spoiler - click to show)turn into a mouse and have chats with other animals, the commentary from the scanning lens, and (Spoiler - click to show)the poignant character moment at the end.
My only critiques are that I would have liked a bit more implementation of synonyms, and that when playing in browser (which I did for the pretty colors/other stylings), there’s a long sequence of timed text that repeats every time you sit down and reflect on how things are going. As you progress in the game, new text is added to the end of this segment; however, you still have to sit through the slow doling-out of the text you’ve already seen each time, with no way (as far as I could tell) to skip through or speed it up. But that's quite a minor thing--on the whole, I love this series and this game!
Empathetic, November 20, 2023The main thing I knew about this game going in was that it makes significant use of the "timed text" mechanic. While I did find it slightly too slow at times, and wasn't sure it was needed as prevalently as it was used, it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the game, and definitely served the author's intended purpose. It's also very nice to be able to turn it off on subsequent playthroughs.
Anyway, on to the rest of the game! I felt for the protagonist a lot; the game seemed to really capture what it’s like to go through life with a stutter, and how difficult it can make everyday interactions. The flashbacks to childhood were quite sad, witnessing this struggling child be ignored and othered (the My Cousin Vinny one especially...). I enjoyed the gameplay, and how it was never a matter of picking the “right” option--rather, it’s left up to the player to decide if they’d prefer to stumble over ordering their favorite food, or smoothly order a food they hate. The color coding of the choices was a good way to indicate how fluently each option would come out.
Ultimately, the game isn’t about beating the stutter; you’re simply experiencing what it’s like to have it, and coping with it however you think is best. I played through four times, interested in seeing the differences between a covert, overt, and middle-of-the-road approach, and enjoyed each playthrough (and getting all but two of the achievements!).
One point of critique is that, regarding the job interview plotline, I would have liked some more background on the PC’s adulthood experiences, in addition to the childhood ones. I wondered if the stutter played a role in them leaving their previous job, and what it might mean for future job prospects. I think more of an exploration of the PC’s dreams, and to what extent the stutter has impacted those dreams, would add a bit more depth. But on the whole, a great game that accomplishes its purpose very well.
Fun Twine puzzler, November 20, 2023I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed by this game at first; the worldbuilding felt a bit bizarre and random for what’s essentially a museum heist story. But once I got into the puzzley portion I was hooked. It’s easy to locate the item you need to liberate from this museum, but less easy to acquire and escape with it.
The gameplay reminded me of the Lady Thalia games—explore, find useful items/info, heist, escape. The game does a good job at creating tension, with an officer following you around to keep an eye on you, appearing and disappearing as you traverse the rooms, and at creating a sense of time passing, with the security office going from occupied at first visit to unoccupied at later ones. The achievements at the end make it clear that there are multiple methods for escaping detection, and that it’s possible to succeed at the job but incriminate yourself in the process. All of this added a great amount of complexity and made for a fun game! (Another note: you’ll find an in-game map, which is nice—I had thought about drawing a map at first, but then I was glad I didn’t bother.)
I do have some nitpicks; I found the (brief) dialogue section rather clunky, and didn’t buy the supposed romantic chemistry between the PC and their conversation partner. And then there were some elements that felt set up to have an impact on gameplay, but didn't seem to in the end, such as choosing your character at the start, and the list of locations to go other than the museum. But I certainly had fun solving the puzzles and will gladly play any future games in this series!
Cute but missing something, November 20, 2023This game's delightful UI, emulating a video call (complete with a Mom sprite), struck me immediately and was a very charming touch. The game also features an accidental call disconnect and a few appearances from the family dog (<3), increasing the verisimilitude.
What I soon found, though, was that the verisimilitude goes a little too far for my taste. A significant part of the game is a very realistic depiction of remotely troubleshooting for a non-tech-savvy older relative, and while I had expected that premise to be balanced out by a certain level of goofiness, that portion of the game is actually played pretty straight and felt a bit tedious because of it.
Each set of choices throughout the game typically consists of a patient/nice choice, a more neutral choice, and an impatient/rude choice. I went mostly with the nice choices, because why would I want to be cruel to this cute old lady sprite? But that made making choices less fun, because there was usually only one option I even considered. After reaching the end I did start a replay to see some of the other content, with the intention of being consistently mean, but I quickly found that I didn’t enjoy doing that, and honestly I wasn’t motivated enough to go through the whole troubleshooting portion again, so I stopped pretty quickly.
There’s definitely a lot to like in the game: lines like “bush-shaving is a legitimate and beautiful artform!” and place names like “West Furthersburg”, for example, as well as the cute art. The story overall is sweet, too, at least if you pick the nice dialogue options. But in a way, choosing only those options made it feel too simplistic. So while I found aspects of the game well done, on the whole it didn't fully work for me.
Not stale trash at all!, November 20, 2023Trail Stash is similar to Andrew's other wordplay games, but it’s written in Twine (Sugarcube specifically) rather than Inform—so it’s not up to the player to think of (in this case) spoonerisms, but rather, to figure out which of the spoonerized objects you acquire will be useful in each of the spoonerized locations. Success unlocks new locations, which yield new objects.
Being familiar with Andrew’s other wordplay games was definitely helpful in catching on to this one; the “use object in place” mechanic isn’t too hard to figure out, but it also is never spelled out, and the need to spoonerize the place names and object names to figure out which object goes with which place isn’t either. Of course it’s a matter of personal preference, but I don’t tend to enjoy when the first part of a puzzle is “figure out the conceit of the puzzle;” I’d rather just be told upfront. Of course, with the choice-based format of this game, it’s entirely possible to solve it by simply collecting all the items and then lawnmowering through them in each location; I tried to avoid doing this and actually think each one through, but I found some to be clued better than others, and I did resort to random guesses a few times.
I enjoyed Trail Stash as another entry in Andrew’s world of wordplay, but I do think it has a rather niche audience and isn’t going to feel particularly accessible to newcomers to Andrew’s work. But if the concept at all appeals to you, I definitely recommend checking it out!
Good horror vibes, unsatisfying ending, November 18, 2023I liked the “mundane horror” vibe of this game, with the eponymous wretched thing wandering around the PC’s house but not posing any active threat. The gameplay, then, is mostly exploring the house and piecing together what might have happened to get you to this point. Of course, you can also--as the game strongly suggests you should--poison the wretched thing and see how that plays out, and in fact that is necessary in order to get the ending that reveals the most information. Unfortunately, this additional backstory still doesn’t shed much light on the situation, and in fact introduces a new mystery that is left unsolved. On the whole, I think the mood is the game's most successful aspect, while the story and pacing don't quite hold up.
Limited parser with a twist, November 18, 2023I was looking forward to this one, and it did not disappoint! I knew it included (Spoiler - click to show)a clever use of the “undo” command, so I thought that aspect wouldn’t be a surprise when it arrived—but it actually still was, and it was delightful. (Spoiler - click to show)I love time shenanigans in games, so I found it very fun to rewind to the beginning and play out a different version of events.
Given the Single-Choice-Jam origins, the game is rather on rails, guiding you the whole time to the single correct command for that turn (as such, it isn’t possible to die or otherwise hit a game-over). You won’t get much out of examining things (typically the description from the main text is just repeated) or trying to explore; rather, it presents a kind of “guess the verb” puzzle of figuring out which of the custom commands is needed at which time. I found this aspect fun, and one of the game’s charms; while it took me a bit to hit on the idea of (Spoiler - click to show)looting the wine bottle in order to drink the wine, it was very satisfying when I did make that connection. I also liked having to (Spoiler - click to show)smite corpses, plural, in order to win that battle; the game really does reward thinking like a barbarian! So I think adjusting your expectations is key to enjoying this game—don’t look for typical parser conventions, but instead appreciate the clever new things this game does with the format.
Well done but not for me, November 18, 2023I didn't finish this one, as after playing for a bit it became clear that it just wasn’t for me. The super-limited parser (e.g., type “i” to “investigrab”, which provides more detail on and/or takes anything that’s important in the current room) removed the aspect of parser games I most enjoy, which is the sense of agency and exploration. Here, I knew there were no secrets to uncover by closely examining my surroundings; it was just a rote matter of hunting down gems to increase my powers to hunt more gems. It’s definitely a well-done game, just very much not my style!
Deeply sad, November 18, 2023(Review largely hidden because most of my thoughts contain spoilers.)
(Spoiler - click to show)My main thought coming away from this one is… this game was deeply sad. Eddie (i.e., child Ed)'s pain comes through so clearly in the game he created, with the idyllic lake serving as a security blanket, so precious that it even comes up in his imagined futures of winning the lottery and being president of the moon. Otherwise, his life is steeped in bleakness: the bullying, the sister dying/dead of leukemia, the bad/absent father, the best-friend-of-convenience… There are moments of joy, like the lake and the cat, and overall the game doesn’t feel too bleak because it’s so mitigated by the childish excitement—you can feel how happy this kid is to have created a game, how clever he feels, and it’s very cute. But now, as adult Ed looking back on it, it mostly just brings him pain.
The ending felt like a gut punch. Ed’s daughter, named Erica after his sister, comes into the room needing to use the computer. She’s kind of rude and dismissive, preoccupied with school, stressed by the shift to online learning due to the COVID lockdown. So her attitude is understandable; she has no idea what her dad’s just been through (and in fact it seems likely that she has little or no knowledge of this part of his past at all). But oof, did it feel like a knife twist.
This game reminded me of the type of literary fiction that essentially reads as a portrait of a deeply unhappy person. I’ve never liked this kind of story because it leaves me wondering what the point is. Here, Ed basically asks that question for us at the end. “Does ancient history matter?” He says he doesn’t think so, but isn’t 100% committed to that answer. And I mean… my thought is, of course it matters. It matters because those events made Ed who he is today, just as ancient Rome played a part in shaping the way our world is today. Even if Ed doesn’t want it to, how can it not matter?
But then, maybe the reason he’s asking is because he does want it to. Maybe he wants to know that this experience of reliving his traumatic past wasn’t pointless after all.
On the whole: too sad for my taste. But definitely a well done game.
Honk if you love this game!, November 18, 2023This was fun! I completed it without using the walkthrough or any hints, which always makes me feel accomplished; the puzzles weren’t too easy, either, but were lightly challenging in an enjoyable way (and there was one I found especially clever). The circus setting was well-detailed; I especially liked the variety of useful props I acquired. The writing was funny (“The Ringmaster began his career as a tightrope walker, and to this day he’s still high-strung”), the NPCs were all distinctive, and I’ll always love an anti-greedy-developer plotline. I also really appreciated the casual queerness, e.g.:
You’ve watched her pull off many incredible feats over the years, among them pulling a rabbit out of a hat, sawing herself in half, transitioning her gender, and pulling a rabbit out of a different hat.
I do think it would have been a stronger game with a bit more polish. Some examples:
-Unimplemented nouns providing the classic “You see no [thing mentioned in room description] here.”
-Conversation options for each of the NPCs still showing up long after they don’t make sense anymore.
-While I liked each of the three acts being its own self-contained puzzle, being able to repeat them (endlessly?) after failing felt like it broke the narrative a bit, especially since you couldn’t discuss your failure with the involved performer at all.
-A portion of the end game sequence seemingly not having anything for the player to do besides wait.
I think a post-comp release could easily take care of these things, though, and make for a truly solid game.
A linear time-loop game about processing loss, November 17, 2023So, this game's blurb is rather misleading. The PC’s partner never appears in the story; by the time we’ve gone through picking up flowers, walking through the park, and reaching home, the partner has already left, and this doesn’t change in the subsequent loops. This isn’t a game about trying to prevent the inevitable, then; it’s about trying to process it.
Unlike a typical time-loop story, details of the day are different every time, from the weather to what’s happening at the dog park, and these shifts help build momentum as the PC progresses linearly through each loop, always carrying out the same string of actions. Choices are present, but fairly few, and I don’t think they really matter (although on second thought, I wonder if some of those toward the end actually do…). I didn’t mind this, as it still felt like an experience I could only get through interactive fiction. The repetition with minor changes created an interesting atmosphere—rather than fighting against the constraints of a static world, the PC has to journey through one that reflects their own shifting emotional state back at them.
The dialogue was written a bit awkwardly, and in the end, the handling of the themes was a little too on-the-nose for my taste. The PC and their partner were never particularly defined as characters, and I think if they had been the emotions would have hit harder. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience, always ending each loop curious to see what would be different next time, and anticipating when and how I would break free.
Didn't quite work for me, November 17, 2023This was an unusual one, starting with a short Twine piece that leads into a parser game. While the “a father made this for his daughter and wants her to play it right now in the hospital” conceit led me to expect a fairly small, simple parser game, it was actually quite large, with many rooms, hidden objects, and multiple NPCs. I started out exploring all the places and collecting all the things; the notes especially were an intriguing layer, and I felt motivated to hunt them down (I wish I could have talked about them to the dad in the “after” segment). So I was settling deep into the parser, when… I realized that my two hours of IFComp playtime were almost up.
Since I wanted to get to the second Twine part before my judging window ran out, I went ahead and skipped to that one without having reached the end of the parser game. Which made the experience of playing out that portion fall somewhat flat, because the PC had finished the game, whereas I hadn’t. It didn’t help that I had already felt at a distance from the PC in the first segment; for example, when I got the choice of whether or not to lie to my mom, I had no idea why the PC might want to. I couldn’t get a read on her relationship with James, either.
The parser game also suffered from some typos, lack of implementation, and disambiguation issues; at first I wasn’t sure if this was intentional, painting the dad character as an imperfect programmer, but nothing in the game supported that reading, so I think it just needed a bit more polish.
As a whole, I didn’t emotionally connect with this game, and I think the large-parser-between-two-Twines format wasn’t ideally suited to a comp with a two-hour judging window. But I did enjoy my time in the parser game, and will definitely be going back to explore more.
Compelling, November 17, 2023I liked this game a lot! It’s very aesthetically pleasing, with soft, shifting-color backgrounds, a map that expands as you go deeper, and lovely art. The engine worked well and made for a smooth choice-parser hybrid experience. After a bit of a slow start, I became invested in the PC’s forest exploration, partially due to her strong voice—her youthful enthusiasm and joy are captured so well. Discovering new things to photograph, interact with, and collect for my sample box was delightful, especially since trying each action on each item has its own unique flavor text. For instance, photos of certain things may come out blurry or not live up to what they’re trying to capture, which was an excellent detail. All in all, this really captured the experience of going on a rambling forest hike.
A layer of intrigue was added once the worldbuilding started trickling in, creating a sense of potential danger in the forest and of precarity about life in general in this world. The small-scale stakes of potentially getting lost, getting in trouble for sneaking out, or even getting attacked by a creature played out against an off-screen backdrop of warring ideologies and a forever-damaged planet. The way that glimpses of this larger geopolitical situation were meted out throughout the story was very effective, providing one puzzle piece at a time that never formed the whole picture, but were enough to convey a strong impression.
I love exploration in games, and this was a thoroughly satisfying experience on that front, with a few small puzzles along the way and an enjoyable PC to spend the time with, along with a compelling world to do it in.
Song -> game, November 17, 2023I didn’t realize to what extent this game was based on the song mentioned as inspiration (“The Blessings” by Dar Williams) until I looked up the lyrics:
And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it’s straight, black and very old, "
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold…
Honestly, I’m super impressed at the way the authors ran with these lines, implementing them very literally into this surreal game about a PC processing the end of a relationship (and now I know the answer to my questions “Why sticks? Why rocks?”).
I love character/emotion/relationship-focused games, so I liked the premise of this one and enjoyed playing out the layers of the PC’s self-reflection and increasing insights. I think the game would have resonated more with me emotionally, though, if both the PC and their ex were more developed as characters; as-is, neither is named and both are characterized fairly vaguely, with some glimpses of their personalities and the tenor of their relationship, but not enough for my taste.
The puzzles and the surreal environments were fun, and I enjoyed the kind-of twist that not all puzzles in each location were fully solvable at first. Because of the unintuitive nature of some puzzles, though, I definitely resorted to lawnmowering several times (and I ran into one minor puzzle-related bug).
Highlight: Mouse friend!
Lowlight: After all the other animal-based puzzles required helping/being kind to them, I was disappointed to have to throw a rock at a bat.
Game-play, November 17, 2023This is an unusual one, and one I quite enjoyed. I’m not super familiar with the history and politics of the USSR, but some Wikipedia-ing early on helped provide the context I needed to understand the backdrop that the play’s five characters are operating against.
I love stories with high stakes in the background that choose to focus on how those stakes affect individual people, and that’s exactly what we get here. A strained sibling relationship, a developing romance, and a long-term marriage are all tested by the oppressive political climate. The image of whispering becoming everyone’s normal way of speaking, because they’re not safe even in their own home, was a very effective one. It contrasted well with the spark of finding a like-minded person who you can trust, which is what Agnessa finds in Nikolai. Even then, though, the two can’t truly be happy together, because they have a fundamental difference in what they want out of life. These lines capture their relationship so well:
Nikolai: Agnya, I love you, I-
Agnessa: Do you? Do you really? Or do you love what you want me to be?
Nikolai [pause]: I think you are what I want you to be. You just won’t let yourself be.
(Spoiler - click to show)And ultimately, this love that gives Nikolai a reason to wake up in the morning is what dooms him. In the end, this felt like a story about futility, especially after I played through several times; there’s no “good” ending, no matter which of the two options the audience chooses at each junction point. Agnessa and Nikolai are always going to be caught and arrested. We’re never choosing their fate; each choice is simply one of two equally bad options. The fictional authors of the play have written our choices for us, and they all lead to those authors’ singular chosen destination.
Except… there’s the secret ending. (Shoutout to Manon for telling me about it!) And that provided an interesting twist, where the audience breaks out of the choice binary and demands a different—happy—ending. Which the actors and the play-runner/actor, the Guide, provide, albeit reluctantly. But then, this ending rings so very hollow, as it obviously wasn’t planned; it doesn’t feel true to the story, and it’s impossible to imagine the characters actually living happily after these events even if the NKVD did have a sudden, random surge of compassion and let them go. So we’re back to futility now, inevitability. You can fight but you can’t really change anything. I don’t read that as the game’s universal message, but for these characters, in this situation… no matter how much we, the audience, might want it to end differently, there was always only ever one place they could end up.
Fun and clever, November 16, 2023This is a very well-crafted game—impressive that it’s the author’s first time working with Twine! The art is moodily evocative, and I enjoyed the way the puzzles were built around it. The hint system and its tiered approach, with the first level letting you know when you didn’t need to worry about a specific object/puzzle yet, was a nice touch. (Spoiler - click to show)And I loved the ending, the way it clicked for me what the answer to “whodunnit” was—and the extra “whydunnit” twist/reveal, which explained so much in retrospect. The answer to the mystery of “who locked me in here with all these weird puzzles??” being “I did, and for good reason!” was very clever.
Brilliant, November 16, 2023Damn, this game. It’s got so much depth, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it after playing. There’s so much emotion here, so much hurt, and yet we have this reflective distance from which to interact with and interrogate it all, even as it feels very personal given that two of the NPCs are different iterations of George Dyer, Francis Bacon’s doomed lover. This is a window on suffering people who in turn inflict suffering on others; on self-destruction/self-harm; on pain channeled into art. It begs the question of what the purpose of art is, why people are led to create and view it, and calls out how it can both connect and alienate us. It makes me feel very conflicted, and I think that’s a good thing. Altogether a brilliant game.
A cheerful, lighthearted game, November 16, 2023...despite the rather stressful situation the PC is in! The PC’s position as somewhat of an outsider who’s suddenly plunged in over their head was a compelling one, and I enjoyed navigating through the various scenarios (especially those involving cute cats or a mischievous monkey). I also appreciated the social management aspects; it was very gratifying to facilitate a nice breakfast chat between guests despite language barriers, and to save two teenagers from a boring day with their parents and also spur a friendship between them in the process.
Super solid parser game, November 16, 2023So much excellence here—the premise, the characters, the setting, the humor, the puzzles, the narrative voice… it’s all so well done. Highlights include the Torch and Pitchfork Society and their perfectly reasonable demands, Hans in general (and specifically, the conversations with him and the possibility of asking him out), and every interaction with the devil. A very smooth and just plain fun experience!
One where fun flair, November 16, 2023I hadn’t played any of Andrew’s Prime Pro Rhyme Row games when I tested this one, but as soon as I got into it I loved it, and after finishing I immediately played through the rest in the series. As a lover of rhymes, alliteration, and wordplay in general, I found it delightful to be tasked with coming up with my own alliterative rhymes as the central mechanic of gameplay. Comparisons to Dr. Seuss are apt, as this is a wacky wordplay-ful world that defies logic, and is all the more fun for it.
Both silly and deep, November 16, 2023A game about your husband’s last night before his execution has no right being this fun! But Victor has accomplished that with a big dose of humor and a richly drawn protagonist who can’t help but be entertaining. Alongside the silliness, though, there’s a lot of emotional depth as the couple’s relationship history and its various layers of love and hurt is gradually revealed. Their conversation—litigating past wrongs, discussing what Xanthippe’s future might hold, and hashing out what they mean to each other—swings from anger to affection in a way that felt very authentic. I liked the bittersweet note of the end, where they’re both able to come to a sort of peace with the impending loss. I was glad to have spent time exploring their relationship, and getting to know Victor’s version of Xanthippe—who is very far from one-dimensional.
Fun with Inform, November 12, 2023This tiny Inform game is built around plays on the engine's standard responses, and the nature of Inform games in general. It will be nonsensical to players who aren't familiar with those, but for players who are, it's very cleverly done. I had a lot of fun poking at it to find all the jokes, and laughed regularly along the way.
Beautiful, November 12, 2023Your Body a Temple takes a dark premise—your body has been destroyed, and you’re now choosing from a variety of “spare parts” that will form you a new one—and turns it into a fun, powerful game. You're presented with four options for each significant body part (face, torso, arms, legs, genitals), which range from a robot head to live branches, and seeing what the slate would be each time was a big part of the appeal. But what really makes the game excellent is the narrative voice. An unnamed person, referred to with she/her pronouns, is building this body for you, speaking to you as she works. She describes each potential option—its pros and cons, the ways it will affect your new life—in a caring, maybe slightly fussy, voice that’s rich with personality and sets a tone of lightness and kindness even as you can build yourself a face of nightmares and arms of live wires.
The intention of getting revenge on those who hurt you is mentioned, but it's left up to the player to decide what that will mean. There’s a human option for each body part, and the descriptions of those note that while they will offer connection with others, they also make you vulnerable. Monstrous/inhuman parts, on the other hand, will help you protect yourself and/or be a threat, at the cost of possibly driving others away. But embracing your humanity may be the best revenge after all: a “distressingly human” face “asserts personhood in the face of dehumanization. It declares agency in the face of destruction. This is a face that demands to be remembered. It is a face that haunts assailants' dreams.”
As has likely been evident from the get-go, this is a very trans story. Beyond just the conceit of choosing one’s own body, the genital options include a “masculinized orifice” and a “feminized appendage”, with no standard P or V in sight. And in a choice that feel adjacent in the way it inverts cultural beauty standards, the human option for the torso is “fat”, and its description pushes back against any negative connotations: “This is a torso built for intimacy. You will be good at cuddling, good at warming others.” In its queering of bodies and embrace of other-ness, even monstrousness, this game is quite beautiful.
Heartbreakingly effective, November 5, 2023This game hurts, but in the best way--capturing a little slice of what it's like to be someone else, in this case someone experiencing psychosis brought on by advanced dementia. You don't understand where you are or why you're here or what's happening around you; what else can you do but lash out? Knowing the author's personal experience with the subject (read the author's note, linked on the Itch page) only made it all the more heartbreaking. A very well crafted game, especially given that it was made in only four hours.
A delightful comedy horror game, November 4, 2023From the get-go, this game was just plain fun. You wake up in the middle of the night in your newly-purchased house, a fixer-upper with "good bones", and you have to pee. But beware--it turns out the house has some surprises in store, and creatures ranging from apparitions to zombies are out to get you! With frequent, humorous asides (one of my favorites: "something like a leg or maybe an arm, with too many joints and fingers (like something out of AI-generated art)") and player-friendly design (after dying, you have the option to jump back to the choice that got you killed and try a different option), it was a delight to play.
Despite the frequent deaths, the game stays away from gore, which felt like an appropriate choice in a story meant to elicit more laughs than chills. Part of the fun in fact is collecting deaths; the game keeps a list of which premature endings you've reached, and once you've won, it lets you jump back to any checkpoint to find the ones you missed (in case, like me, you're compelled to learn exactly how each creature can do away with you in an alliterative manner. Yes, I may have perished once again, but this time it was because I was yeeted by a yeti!).
The game also has a very attractive presentation, including the color scheme, the font, and the skull emojis marking choices you've tried that have led to a death. A very polished and enjoyable game!
Good use of a tricky engine in an emotionally painful game, October 28, 2023This is a horror game based on the common-to-real-life feeling "Why am I such a mess when everyone else has it together??" Which is really underscored by the chilling ending. (Spoiler - click to show)Learning that everyone else suffers the same thing as the PC, and yet they still have no sympathy and just expect the PC to handle it, was so reminiscent of when you tell someone about a struggle you're facing and their response essentially boils down to "Yeah, that's a problem for everyone, you're not special." There were a few aspects of the game that didn't work for me, but overall I found it a clever use of the Texture engine and an interesting, well-done game.
Quick, fun, clever, September 20, 2023I played this because of Porpentine's recommendation in her 2012 interview with Emily Short. To quote her:
"Highnoon is a remake of a 42 year old BASIC game ported to Twine that I find fascinating–strategic and CYOA elements entwined in a squishy way, intfic bleeding out of the mechanical layer. It’s a Wild West duel that gives you almost as many ways to fail or reject the scenario as to play it. Give me interesting failure or give me death." (Twine version)
This sums up exactly the reason I enjoyed it--it was easy to win, but the failures were honestly more fun (and funny), and I was motivated to play again multiple times to try to discover more of them.
Short and spooky, September 18, 2023While there are a few typos and unimplemented nouns, I absolutely love short, tightly-focused games, and this is an excellent example. Deceptively simple, it has a creeping sense of dread that grows as you progress, culminating in a reveal that both surprised me and felt completely fitting. Definitely recommend if it at all intrigues you.
CWs: (Spoiler - click to show)Dead animals (described in detail), dead body (briefly described), blood, body horror
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