Reviews by manonamora
dialoguejam
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Chatterbox is a short Twine piece about chatboxes experiences. Using the simple interface of Harlowe, you incarnate the user ripherup, a true crime enthusiast discussing cases with other members of a Forum, bickering over the details. Between technological mishaps and diverging conversations, you find yourself in a pretty chaotic situation. Thought the game is pretty minimal, it does encapsulate pretty well the vibe of chatrooms, especially unmoderated ones.
I’m also a sucker of this chat-based storytelling concept…
Phantom Protocol is a short interactive prologue made in Godot, set (so far) inside your phone. A strange number contacts you, disoriented, claiming to be a newly created intelligence (AI). You can interact with it (as the game gives you different options), as well as other individuals contacting you (including the “owner” of said AI and a “friend”). The game ends after a couple of messages.
Though there isn’t much inside the current build, I’d be interested to see where it goes.
ConversationalRumblings is a short cyclical Twine piece about two people looking for an activity to do and talking about it. Between going to the movies or make ceramics, listening to music or going to the club, or maybe just chill and make some poems, the two will ramble on bouncing from one activity to the next, never ending.
The way they interact with one another, I wouldn’t want to be friend with either of them…
Extended Sabbatical is a short linear interactive piece made in Unity about… making a game, or more about not making that game. Though it focuses on struggles and frustrations (and maybe even procrastination), it was a pretty fun piece. The dialogue is charming, the art is colourful and stylish, and it is pretty smooth.
I enjoyed it quite a bit!
Tresmir Sight is a short sci-fi (fantasy?) visual novel, where you play as a young human trespassing in a camp, looking for someone important to them. Ensues a conversation with the leader, where choices allows you to cooperate or obstruct their questioning.
Since you are dropped in the middle of a story, you being capture while trespassing, unwilling to answer to anyone, it is pretty hard to be invested in the MC’s struggles without knowing anything about it. For all we know, he is the bad guy here. You only learn of the reason why you are here because the answer is pulled from you.
Still, it looks neat and polished. I would play a longer version of this game if it ever happened.
Tell Me About Yourself is a short Twine conversation between you and your interlocutor Coda. Seemingly a stranger, Coda asks about yourself, often with limited options to choose from or strangely formatted question. There are three endings, two of them branching out close to the start, while the other is down a longer path.
It all seems quaint, I guess, at first, with the kind of questions you’d ask someone you don’t know, but it turns weird. You learn little about Coda, and can ask little about them (when you do, their answers are strange…). And when he calls out by a different name, the whole tone shifts and the game abruptly end.
I’m just very confused…
beach is a short Twine conversation between two individuals on the beach, which was initiated by one of the two following an incident (implied to be suicide). You are asked to share your feelings, which sends you down towards one of three paths, of diverging length.
Some more uncomfortable to read than others, with your interlocutor trying to make your feel guilty for your past actions, shaming you if you do not feel that, as if you had been the cause (or at least catalyst) for the incident - while, in reality, they admit that no matter what you would have done, it was always going to end up this way. It is pretty manipulative, trying to put you at fault, asking of you to never forget them.
It’s telling that the word sorry is only utter by you, and not them.
The Disappearance of Kevin from Finance is a short mystery game in Twine, where your colleague, the titular Kevin from Finance, is reported as missing. The shocking news make waves among the company, as many realise no one truly knew much about the man, aside from his love of mystery books and his lacklustre ability of staying connected.
Through emails, chat logs, phone calls and even face-to-face conversation, you are given the opportunity to investigate the strange disappearance of your mysterious colleague. Throughout the exchanges, you get hints to what is going on, though you will need to reach the end to realise what was truly going on…
This was a lot of fun to see the mystery unfold. And the true moral of the story is truly corporate incompetence…
Imago is a short but very branched out poetic “rogue-like” monologue, reflecting on the masts that one wears and the image we preset to other. You address a crowd, maybe a fictional one, aiming to entertain, confess or maybe philosophise. Depending on your choices, and a bit of RNG, you will end up reaching one of…
THIRTY SIX ENDINGS. Yeah, 36 different endings. Lots of going back and forth between the choices and hoping the game sends you to a new section, to find them all. With the richness of the text (one playthrough is short, but you need to digest the prose) and because of the randomness, I stopped at about 15 or so of them.
Roman Holiday is a strange creepy game, one I don’t know what to make of. A group of friend are one some sort of road trip, lost (sort of), stopping at a store in the middle of nowhere and of the the night. Ensue strange happenings.
It sort of reminded me of those paranormal movies, with its VCR/TV visual/audio quality, or that 80-90s low-render graphics for the characters. A lot of the game is spent looking at cut-scenes of conversations between the different characters, with a bit of moving around, and some branching conversation (with at least one NPC, afiak).
In any case, it’s creepy, you don’t really know what’s happening, and things don’t quite make sense - I still don’t know what happened, I ran into a To Be Continued screen.
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