Ratings and Reviews by HereticMole

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Edited to remove a bug report that no longer applies to current versions.

I wanted to save this entry as a treat, since I’ve had a good time with the author’s 4x4 games and the Rosalinda series. The game is a lot more like the latter than the former, with its wild hijinks and smartly designed gameplay elements similar to a puzzly parser game or point-and-click. This includes some solutions that seem whacky based off item combinations but aren’t, because most everything is hinted well. (Except maybe (Spoiler - click to show)the acid pool/spacesuit, but the way to solve it did make sense once I read it, I just figured I’ve already opened the crate so I don’t need to do anything more with it.)

The premise states you’re a worker building and training the machine that will replace you. This is not a contemporary drama set in the 2020s, it’s in the far future on a space station, and the story is generally lighthearted but knows when to be serious. There are a variety of different endings whether you do as expected, subvert/technically comply with the request, or give up. I got every ending thanks to the hint thread (Spoiler - click to show)including the secret one after save-scumming four times - pretty tiring for my mouse-clicking finger but the ending itself is worth it. I cheered in the endings where we show up upper management, raged whenever Hex didn’t survive or gets put in a worse situation, and felt really shitty reading that one ending (Spoiler - click to show)where you throw your friend Sniffy under the bus to ensure you won’t get terminated.

I had a lot of fun going through the game and its different endings!

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

Clover, your childhood friend turned crush is moving. You and her have several things to say (or not say) in seven days…including, perhaps, a confession of love. What could’ve been a frustrating will-they-won’t-they is alleviated by the brisk pacing, a down-to-earth tone instead of melodrama, and some pokes from a third friend who injects some needed levity and pointed observations to the mix.

I got all the endings, three on a first playthrough, reloading before the final choice. I started a second playthrough (Spoiler - click to show)intentionally taking all the options that distance you from Clover which changes the endings for confessing/saying you’ll miss her to get the last two. I found the choices mostly clear on whether they signaled denialism, attempting to meet the issue head on, or simply deepening your relationship. The writing style did a good job communicating the fragile atmosphere and the characters’ emotions. Still, I was left wondering: what specifically about Clover makes her the object of the protagonist’s affection (and vice versa)? This doesn’t really get an answer, so despite my appreciation of each individual element I still felt like I was being kept at a distance from these characters.

As an aside that will probably mean nothing to the Ren’Py-unaware, every other Ren’Py game I’ve played (with the exception of very short games) has had an options menu on the title or pause screen. The lack of one did weird me out a bit, but I’ve never tried developing anything in that system so I’m not sure if that’s a built-in thing you can choose to leave out or a thing that you opt in to. This is not a mark against the game, but the only thing I really wanted was making the “skip read text” toggle option go faster and a volume slider (the BGM is very quiet), but I could adjust to not having these options.

I would recommend Before the Snow Melts if you are fine experiencing a “subtle v i b e s” snapshot of the “will-they-won’t-they to confession” stage (which is very much signposted in the blurb and author’s comment) and not a full-blown romance arc.

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Some edits were made.

The emphasis on “perfectly normal mystery” is a dead sign that we are not, in fact, dealing with the mundane here. Something, or rather, some things are missing when the protagonist ventures inside City Hall. It was at this moment when I knew for a fact that the initial premise was mainly an excuse to go through the building and deal with item puzzles rather than do some social deduction with city officials. I had to use the walkthrough for many puzzles I considered unintuitive. I am also, admittedly, Bad At Puzzles, but most people were in the same boat from comments made on intfiction and the Neo Interactives Discord.

Functions such as ABOUT/CREDITS, UNDO, and TALK TO are unimplemented. While there are some grammatical errors around objects that I assume, to my Inform-illiterate mind, are related to how items are created and treated by the development system, I did not find any other typos nor did I find anything that was outright bugged.

Finishing a game, especially your first, is a milestone to be celebrated and I am glad to sample the content and the thought put into it. If the author makes more creations with the lessons they learned from The Missing City Council, I’d love to experience them.

(the following paragraph spoils a puzzle solution)

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

You are Anna Pointed, a detective on her first case - the disappearance of a baking contest participant’s ingredients. Talk to five quirky individuals, learn their alibis, remember details of noteworthy items and scenery, confront people on their lies, and uncover the truth (and some personally embarrassing secrets)!

The system appears to be a custom one made by the author. It sort of resembles the way default Ink games look. The game doesn’t force you to memorize details, as you can scroll through previous text, all the way back to the beginning if you so desire. You’ll need it, as you’ll be quizzed on small details dating back to before you started talking to the suspects and victim, through completing sentences using available evidence from dropdown menus. The game is forgiving and will let you guess as many times as you want without penalty. Realistically, the person who hired a detective would probably tell her to get out after seeing her fumble her accusations fruitlessly for eight turns straight, but that would be tremendously unfun.

In the beginning, exposing contradictions was not too troublesome, but in the end, it starts to become a chore as the amount of past text increases. This can compound if you’re me and banged your head against one of the puzzles for quite some time before finally resorting to looking at the walkthrough. By late game I had to CTRL + F the whole text log for people’s names, pieces of evidence, etc. Additionally, the dropdown method led to some frustration in two cases where I had the right idea but didn’t pass due to having to fit my idea into a specific sentence structure and unclear evidence naming (could be alleviated by, for example, using (Spoiler - click to show)“Dorian’s costume” and “Barnaby’s uniform” instead of just “costume” and “uniform”).

Other than that, the plot made sense with fun writing and it was personally fun having my starting theory be proven half-right as I approached the final segments. Definitely take your own notes for this one.

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

I was a bit peeved at myself for not playing Warden: a (bug)folk horror until after EctoComp 2025 had passed, because it wormed its way into my heart with its approachability and worldbuilding. Strings takes place in the same world but is much more light-hearted (though that’s not to say there’s absolutely no scary elements at all). You are Pik, a bard gathering a band for the performance of a lifetime - impressing your lover, the moon.

To get a musician to join, you need to do a task for them - some are as simple as figuring out how to get to the musician in the first place (and being astute enough to note a certain word is common across some interactable objects), while one is a semi-elaborate “figure out where you are in a maze, (Spoiler - click to show)search for a lost baby, and also try not to die” endeavor. Most of your puzzle-solving is done through custom commands related to playing an instrument, and the implementation is smooth. This structure didn’t feel repetitive at all thanks to the short length of the game and the varied situations you have to deal with to get to (or help) each character.

The game has achievements! Some are easy to guess from the name, some are a bit harder and I haven’t gotten all of them when I wrote this review, but I got the cutest achievement on the first playthrough so it doesn’t matter to this completionist (purely for story and not difficulty achievements) here. (Spoiler - click to show)Seriously, once Pik encounters the pupa, most of my internal thought was “AHHHHHHHH CUTE BABYYYYY” the whole time.

Strings, like Warden before it, is greater than the sum of its parts thanks to its writing capturing the imagination and giving a breath of life to this big world of little critters. Sign me up for more (bug)folk stories, or other works from Tabitha and baezil!

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

You are a Mysterious Creature Researcher, on a Mysterious Creature Hunt after a totally-not-nefarious-front hires you to do so. To facilitate this, you’re given the location of a small town with a history of strange animals, a convenient stealth suit and a list of three such Mysterious Cryptids to catch.

You are given a choice of six set locations to go to. Each location has the same cryptid, but the list of required ones is randomized each playthrough. Once you go to a location, you encounter an unusual creature, and must cross-reference the initial description (that can be expanded with further observation and taking photos) against the traits written in the list (which is a convenient choice click away). You can back out and come back later if you’re not sure, which is advisable since you’ll most likely find at least two cryptids with overlapping traits in the required list. You also have a notebook that lets you write your own text, which is a nice feature but I didn’t feel the need to utilize it in my playthroughs.

The game is reasonably paced and not too long. A first playthrough will probably take fifteen to thirty-five minutes depending on how thorough you are. You’re graded on how many of the correct cryptids you caught. If you got all of them right, you have a further choice between three different end states. If you get less than that, the game basically goes “womp womp try again.” The endings themselves run the gamut on (Spoiler - click to show)how much you care about the cryptids’ wellbeing. They’re short and close the game off well while also being open-ended enough to give the viewer room to imagine what could happen next.

The writing accomplishes the tasks of creating diverse creatures (I appreciated the intentionally-low quality black-and-white photos) and a setting with history - I liked the info about the town’s locations and wanted to know more. I only noted two typos (“Your” should be “You’re” in the blurb, one section reads “it’s two hooves”). The creature in the well was my favorite, (Spoiler - click to show)a freaky being who can imitate voices and lure people into wells. I got the cave worm in both my playthroughs so I also have a soft spot for it (sorry for the (Spoiler - click to show)whole “sawing the body off” trick, but hopefully you will be fine after I let you go…but does that mean there are two of them running around that cave? Did the halves join back together? Desperately need to know the answer).

Cryptid Hunter is a pleasant little pattern matcher, especially for the people who cared about filling out those Pokedex entries, though I would say one complete playthrough where you capture all three assigned cryptids is enough.

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

I was optimistic when I learned that this visual novel was by the Saltwrack author. They made quite an impression through their survival game filled with just enough information of lived-in worlds to leave you with a vivid picture, but with ample open room and ambiguity. My interest grew when I read the description on itch.io speaking of the assassination of rulers, underground societies with unorthodox, twisted beings and beliefs, and “antierotic obscenity.” They sure delivered.

Upon opening the game, I was immediately greeted with a background image resembling an entrance to a mossy cave, a gothic font (I eventually had to switch to a more readable DejaVu Sans from the accessibility menu on repeated playthroughs), and music that I can only describe as “sparse chime-y drone BGM” with occasional concerning-sounding human(?) vocalizations. I kept the game open for quite a while just because the title music is nice to listen to.

Crier is weird and gross (praising) and perilous for yourself and others. It contains just enough information on the world that made me yearn for more drip-fed cave lichen lore and a motley collection of Creatures. It is absolutely not for everyone - the presentation and a lot of the characters’ speaking habits and appearances (looking at you, (Spoiler - click to show)proxydrone, but you rock that stinger dick) can be off-putting. Still, you don’t necessarily have to be a Person Who Enjoys or Is Interested in Being Enveloped in Cave Mildew While Attempting to Become a Cyborg to have a productive time discovering the nuggets of insight from this deliberately unpleasant presentation.

Descend into grime and meet homuncuslime queens, chitin drones, and blorbo from our chemicals! Tap into life-threatening violations to make deposing all-powerful leaders a reality! Listen to minimalistic ambient sounds! Sometimes there’s a Menacing Piano of Anxiety when you run into a real creep (and I mean it, one character’s description made me do a double-take over a certain word)! Appreciate the drippy lichen cavern aesthetic from a distance! Experience many gruesome game overs (the visuals fade to black thankfully)! Embrace and interpret imperfect communication in order to destroy the unjust world order!

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

This is a hyperlink story that is also a demonstration of the author’s own Spiki framework. Dialogue is shown in script form with descriptions written in literary style. To progress the story, you can click underlined text within the current page or click on the passage names at the bottom bar. You can actually go to any passage in the game, regardless of where you are, by accessing the sandwich menu at the top left.

Cyclic Fruition centers around a trio (there is a narrator, who sometimes speaks as if they are part of the group, but they’re not acknowledged by the others so I was confused if they were an actual entity) who decide to explore a nearby town since their train hasn’t arrived. While going through the story you will quickly, or eventually, learn (Spoiler - click to show)that the game continuously loops. You will go back to the same starting passages (text does not change with repetitions, so you are reading the exact same words) once you explore a thread enough.

The word choice, description quality and overall structure made this story interesting to think about, if a little hard to digest. One particular thread takes a turn into a philosophical and linguistic discussion after a short verse section. Another passage contains (Spoiler - click to show)a hyperlink that doesn’t shunt you towards the next passage, but rather a blog post about a real-life textbook, with its origin story quite similar to what just happened in the game. Within the blog post is a diagram that explicitly inspired Cyclic Fruition’s structure, including the direct names of some passages. After reading the post, I understood what the author was going for and appreciate what their goal was writing this game, though I still find my comprehension of the final product uncertain and incomplete.

Still, I was immersed in this little world, and it was a great way to get me to start thinking more about (Spoiler - click to show)behavior structure.