Reviews by Hanon Ondricek
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Interesting story generator, August 25, 2016Your goal is to kill Dracula, and the game will randomly generate potentially endless methods, roles, and reasons why. The bulk of the tale is spent following leads to track Dracula; a nice use of revealing links in Twine2. While the details of the story may seem a bit like a notebook that has been tumbled in a clothes dryer too long, that's actually the point in this toybox type of narrative which is changing details like a mad-libs slot machine but still remembering your generated role from the beginning. The necessarily self-contained nature of the events might read somewhat like Fallen London storylets because of this, but individual bits of prose are juicy and nicely-written.
I can appreciate this type of magickry which I've also attempted on occasion to disguise dead-ends and repetition in parser IF. Worth a replay or two, especially if you're into classic vampire lore.
Funny. Meta., May 24, 2016I can't resist a game where you argue with the narrator.
A bit Princess Bride, a bit With Those We Love Alive, a dash of Stanley Parable, and the rest an over-enthusiastic tale of utter slapdash nonsense. I smiled the entire way through.
The greatest game I've ever played. Seriously., April 17, 2016DoS (every epic needs an acronym) distills the infinite epic sweep of a full-size adventure down into an hors d'oeuvre you can gulp quickly and get on with your life without any of that bothersome textual detail. Roleplaying options include: Explore, open chests when you find them, fight monsters when they show up, and visit the marketplace, where you can buy a fantastically varied array of loot, ranging from wood to tin. That's all you need.
Normally I'd write this game off as an experiment in building a fighting system in Twine, but DoS actually plays so fast it achieves the same addictiveness of a slot machine or a clicker game.
I'm being serious when I say I would probably play this regularly to pass the time if it were extended just a little more to include some more variation: more loot, more outlandishly escalating monster types and more dryly mundane room and treasure descriptions as the player levels up. Throw in three or four random surprise encounter types to keep things interesting, and this is a winner. No, really. I'm serious.
Brilliant Interactive Resource, March 23, 2016As someone just starting with ChoiceScript, I'm alternately giddy with its simplicity and stumped by some bit of trickiness. This Twine walks you through the basics as well as some moderate-skill code examples such as how to handle letting the reader choose genders for themselves and NPCs, easy ways to create a repeating hub with variable text, and the use of the testing routines provided by ChoiceScript.
Good example of multimedia Twine, March 23, 2016This is not a long story, nor a complicated one. It is a fairly simple easy puzzle, and almost seems to be an experiment in what Twine can do. I'm giving the game two stars, but the multimedia presentation gets it another for effort. I'd like to see a more involved story presented like this.
First question: (Spoiler - click to show)What is your favorite genre? Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, Classical, Alternative, or Other? Where's country? I don't like country, but it's a pretty egregious choice to lump it in "other".
Third question: (Spoiler - click to show)What kind of headphones do you use to listen to music? Brain Candy, Skull Candy, Eye Candy, Beats, Bose, Ear Buds, Buds, Other Buds. I use Logitech Headphones, and some of us over the age of twenty like to listen to music in the open air from speakers. Beats and Bose might be headphones, but they are high end and out of most people's price range. "Ear Buds, Buds, and Other Buds" are the same thing, unless there's some weirdness with ear buds I've not learned. I do use ear-buds, but it's either the apple buds that came with my phone, or any random $12 ones that haven't broken yet.
Very nice presentation though.
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Okay another shot. Perhaps the initial alienation I experienced was intentional. This is a weird experience and not what I was thinking. It's two strange dialogues with some media. I'm not quire sure it did much other than character study. Lots of fake choices make the experience a bit tone deaf. As an experiment in a new system (caniuseitcaniuseitpleaseisitavailable?) it's a successful prototype in that the text has timings. I'd love to experiment with it.
Difficult handwriting font, illegible blue links on a dark gray background, and a carpet laying in the room without a direct object.
Forgiveness rating is superfluous, since there's one link on every page and the only abuse of the player is optically.
http://grammarist.com/usage/lay-lie/
Please let us read your words! What's wrong with a normal serif font?
A neat reimagining, September 13, 2015Secret Agent Cinder recasts the classic heroine as a spy infiltrating the ball in a stealth mission. Accompanying are nicely drawn comics that take the place of elaborate descriptions. Some text is provided, but is spare and utilitarian. This game has a lot of neat tricks and does more with the images to supply necessary information than normal illustrated stories do. The map and occasional orientation can be a tad confusing, but otherwise this is a unique and novel Twine with loads of personality that would have been a great IFComp entry.
Creepy but not interactive, July 25, 2015This is a short story told in second-person in Twine. There is no interaction since the only link on each page leads to the next page. The writing is good and the subject matter is suitably creepy. Since there is no interaction, perhaps it might have worked a little better in first person, since I really didn't identify with the protagonist.
Could have been better perhaps if(Spoiler - click to show) the protagonist were texting to *you* as the older unknown forum friend and you had choices of what to say back and a bit of decision whether the ending that occurs actually happens or not. Because essentially this is a turnaround of "stranger danger/beware people online" where a character is tricked into helping someone who is frightened and doesn't realize that is bait pulling them into their own trap.
Recommended if you have 20 minutes and would enjoy a weird horror story which is both subtly explicit and still manages to leave quite a bit to the imagination.
Sadness of Inventory, July 25, 2015Interesting idea with good writing. An inventory of things that lets you infer the story around it. It's a bit abrupt, and assumes you will lawnmower the choices in order (which I did at first). Unfortunately, picking the last item first will end the story, which removes any actual sense of interaction with the list or replayability.
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