Ratings and Reviews by ccpost

I liked the first Psy High quite a bit as a fun, choice-based game set in the supernatural high school hijinx mold of something like Buffy. The second installment keeps everything that worked well in the first game -- teens trying to figure out their lives while also dealing with nefarious mystical schemes -- and builds on it.

In this one, you've graduated high school and you're contemplating what's next while working as a camp counselor at a local camp. As you might expect, all is not what it seems at the camp. There's a mysterious source of powerful magic with troubling ties to the camp, and a number of interested parties are trying to make a move to either exploit or quell that magic. Your main goal for the game is to choose how you want to influence these goings on, which will have stakes for the camp -- and potentially the world.

All the while, you're also keeping up with your day-to-day duties as a camp counselor. The game effectively pivots between the magical storyline and the world of the camp. I found myself weighing decisions about to resolve drama between campers with as much care as how to approach the powerful magic in the woods. As it becomes clear, the world of the camp and the powerful magic are deeply intertwined.

While I thought the story of the first game was interesting enough, the magical mystery in #2 is really compelling, something that would feel at home in as an X-Files episode. (Spoiler - click to show)There's a settlement in the woods near the camp of people who have found a way to tap into a magical conduit to siphon life energy from campers to keep themselves alive, possibly forever. The game presents a range of intriguing paths for either stamping out this magical mystery or altering it for your own purposes.

The game also builds on #1 in terms of character arc. You have the option to upload your save file from the previous game and continue developing the relationships and aspirations begun in that story. For my playthrough, this was accomplished seamlessly, and I really felt like I was just picking up where I left off. For a choice-based game with a robust branching structure, this was a very impressive feat. Now, you see the player character move beyond the confines of their sleepy New England town and imagine what they want to do with their life(Spoiler - click to show) (while also grappling with the possibility of becoming essentially immortal and totally unmoored from normal human experience of time!). For similar reasons to why I liked the first game, I love how Slitt uses this supernatural teen drama genre to examine this bigger pivotal decision points in life.

Psy High 2 has further built out the world and its magical possibilities. As the main cast have all graduated, I'm not sure if there's potential for a third installment or not, but I would definitely return to this world again.

This game hit exactly the right tone as I was hoping for: a mostly lighthearted teen mystery game with a supernatural twist, a la Buffy. As a big fan of that kind of CW-style drama, I liked this Choice of Games title quite a bit. I like stories that can balance the mundane concerns of teens trying to navigate the world on their own with some bigger concerns, and Psy High definitely delivers that.

You play as a high school Junior, starting to look ahead to college and what comes next while still very much embroiled in the social tensions of your small-town high school. The supernatural twist is that something has happened recently in the seaside town of Kingsport that has given many students a range of strange powers. The playable character is a clairvoyant, and other friends have telekinesis, ability to control fire, and powers along those lines. You've started to use your powers to solve mysteries, often with the help of your core group of friends, setting up a 'Scooby gang' dynamic that's a lot of fun.

The writing is also quite good, which makes this all work. Kingsport is a fully realized setting, so this doesn't feel like just a generic high school. Parts of the town's history and location come into play in compelling ways. Slitt also does a good job rendering the high school social dynamics, presenting a number of different distinct characters that the playable character can further bond with, whether romantically or platonically.

At the start of the game, your concerns are more focused on where you fit in your social circles and what you want to prioritize in your Junior year of school. Are you putting your energies into academics or athletics, for instance? As you progress through the game, you start to piece together a bigger mystery (Spoiler - click to show)involving someone trying to control the minds of students at the school. The mystery was fun to unravel, and the game structure provided what seemed like several different ways to approach the problem - or if you even saw (Spoiler - click to show)a magical mind control device as more of an opportunity than a problem.

I liked the path I took through the game, but it almost seemed a bit too easy to arrive at a 'good' ending. This is part of my only minor issue with the game, that some of the choices with an impact on stats and some of the ways to customize your character felt shallower and less developed than other CoG titles I've played. Since this game was one of the earlier titles in the CoG catalog, it could be that they were still figuring out ways to balance choice and agency while still ensuring that players arrive at some kind of satisfying conclusion to the story. The game definitely was fun and satisfying, but it seemed like some parts of the story abruptly snapped into place, especially toward the end.

I was a big fan of Theodoridou's Rent-a-Vice, so I was excited to see them come back with another Choice of Game title. RRR explores some similar themes as the previous game - the ethics of choice, porous boundaries between simulation and real life - but I like this one even more. Theorodoridou has wrapped this game in a sophisticated narrative structure, a game within a game, and you as the player are enmeshed along with the player characters. You are not just the voyeur, moving characters through a branching narrative, but you are actually implicated in trying to tease out the differences between the blurry layers reality and game.

The basic premise of RRR is that you and your friends have stumbled upon some secret game, and when you play it, you are actually in the gameworld - kind of Tron-esque - and things that happen in the gameworld have repercussions back into the real world. What I found really compelling about RRR is how Theorodidou translates this into a choice-based IF format. You play through different kinds of games, shooters and puzzlers, but you as the player navigate these experiences through the classic Choice of Games interface. This could be clunky or shallow, but Theodoridou absolutely pulls it off.

This part of the story is balanced with the playable character's real life, struggling to keep up with school, friends, family, and work while also trying to figure out a cursed game. The characters are well developed such that you feel the pull between the game within the game and the pressures of your daily life. Worrying about what you're going to do after high school or where you stand with your friends and family makes the stakes of the game within the game all that more real.

The mystery of the game within the game is very well crafted. You as the player learn more about the nature of this game that blurs the boundaries of reality along with the characters in the game. I actually haven't cracked it yet myself, but there's a puzzle that runs through the game that seems to unlock a secret ending if you're able to solve it. Even without solving that meta-puzzle, the game offers a satisfying - if still unresolved - experience.

This is a lovely, meditative game where you play as a kid who goes off on an adventure through the forest nearby their house -- though you go a bit farther out than your parents would like and you encounter some danger along the way. The main focus of the game is your exploration of the forest, including taking photographs of the landscape and collecting samples of plants, bits of debris, and odd artifacts. But as you explore, the narration that accompanies your observations reveals the contours of a bigger, intriguing story: (Spoiler - click to show)some kind of world-altering period in the recent past, some combination of climate change and political instability, that has impacted civilization for good.

Pseudavid develops this larger story in a brilliant, subtle way. We are not playing through that story; we learn about it second hand, refracted through the player character's natural descriptions of what they're encountering on their walk. These observations are written quite well -- beautiful bits of prose poetry describing a discarded snack bag or moss growing on a log. The player character also does not have full knowledge of this history either, as major events largely transpired in their parents' generation. This is the world that they know and have grown up in, though they have some stilted awareness of the world before.

There are some light puzzles, but these serve more to put up guardrails on your exploration and ensure that you hit spots you might not have otherwise. (Spoiler - click to show)For instance, you never would have needed to cross the river if the boar didn't knock over the water tower; and you never need to find the cabin, if the monitor lizards don't block the bridge across the river. For the most part, I found the Gruescript interface to work very well with the exploration/observation mechanics of the game, but it becomes a bit clunky when trying to solve the puzzles.

I could see this game as one in a series, where we learn more about this near-future world through the eyes of other characters. But if this is just a standalone, then it works really well as a kind of sci-fi game: a seemingly normal walk in the woods during which we learn about how very different our world could be.

You play as the warden of a crumbling temple, keeping alive the lore of a serpent god while also looking after a brood of odd, half-human sea children. As you proceed through the game, you glean bits and pieces of this fading religion and the strange world you inhabit, but you as the player never get the full picture. The persistent mystery, the uneasy unknowing, that continues even after multiple run throughs is what makes this game special. Akin to the experience of religious devotion, this game feels both incredibly massive and claustrophobic in its intimacy.

The game looks and sounds fantastic: a Twine rendering of a forgotten illuminated manuscript. The slightly glowing gold hyperlinks look like ink that's caught a bit of candlelight. The dull chanting in the background pushes forward deliberately, certainly. This look and sound are complements to the text: the thoughts of a hermit, thoughts that get puzzled over and twisted through years of silent, repeated meditation. Cycling links are used to great effect to communicate this mode of thought that folds in on itself until clarity -- perhaps -- is achieved, or lost for good.

Baccaris smartly doles out hints and glimpses of the game world and mythos in subtle and understated details embedded in prose that ranges in tone from contemplative to foreboding. I'm left so intrigued by the Oversea and the world beyond the island. Perhaps most powerfully, the player learns about this history and religion through a series of rituals. This was such a cool mechanic: as the player, you chose the ritual you want to perform, and then you tweak details of the ritual based on what you think will be most likely to garner a response from the Pursuer. It's through puzzling over these details that you really understand the nuances of this religion and the different orientations one might have to this ineffable god.

There is a story arc that's suggested at, as to whether the aging devotee to a fading religion can find peace, but this wasn't the strongest element of the game for me. I could keep playing around with the rituals, trying out different configurations of sacrifice, prayer, and votive offering -- even if the serpent god isn't ready to reveal themself to me.

I like ChoiceScript games a lot, though they can often be significant time commitments, containing a novel's length of text and many possible story paths to explore. This game, in contrast, is a quick romp centering around a pretty unusual food frying competition...These authors have also released, The Bread Must Rise, a full-length Choice of Games title set in this same universe that I'm eager to try, but I felt that One Does Not Simply Fry was a fun -- though far from perfect -- introduction to this world.

The setup of the game is certainly intriguing and quite different from a lot of other ChoiceScript games that I've played. The game bills itself as a humorous send-up of fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings in particular) and reality TV baking competitions -- not your typical mashup! The first part of the game does a good bit of world building to introduce the player to the overall domain of the game world, the Twelve Mostly Civilized Realms, and to the city of Godstone in particular, a baking-obsessed city that happens to be situated at the base of an apocalypse-inspiring active volcano.

While presenting a genuinely interesting and weird fantasy world, the first part of the game was also very information-dense, with exceedingly long passages that often lacked meaningful choices. Instead, I would have appreciated shorter descriptive passages of particular parts of Godstone that the player moves through as they are given options to interact with other citizens, make preparations for the competition, or undertake other activities that exposed them to details about the world.

The second part of the game, which centers around the actual fry-off competition, was totally driven by player choices and was quite inventive. The player essentially engages in a series of choice-based mini games: purchasing ingredients to make the perfect onion ring, setting up your kitchen, and then actually putting the ingredients together to make your onion ring. I haven't really played a ChoiceScript game that involves this sort of immediate, task-based string of choices. Typically, games will have you make a single choice at some important point and then, based on your stats or previous choices, determine an outcome that may lead to success, failure, or something else. This game design, where the player makes a string of task-based choices that accumulate and compound in real time (or in the time it takes for the player to read the passages) was very fitting for the fry-off competition.

I found parts of the game to be pretty funny and the satire often worked for me. There's an interesting underlying commentary here about people who put their heads in the sand and distract themselves with escapist entertainment while a black magic-powered volcano threatens eternal doom. I found the running gag of (Spoiler - click to show)the stadium seating built up over the caldera of the volcano, with fans of the baking competition continually falling into the molten lava, to be darkly funny. However, other jokes and aspects of the satire just did not work for me. Much of the game's humor relies on pretty obvious and groan-worthy jokey references to LotR, like the villain of the baking competition being named 'Sour Ron' (get it?!!). The LotR-specific references typically felt very forced and not really in service of the game's bigger satirical project. The points when the game successfully blends fantasy and reality TV tropes felt fresh and fun, and I wish those had been the main focus of the game's humor.

While this game was pretty inconsistent, it's compact enough to weather the not-so-good parts and get to the engaging and funny parts. I wonder if there was some rush to get this into the IF Comp that contributed to the inconsistencies in the writing and design. The good parts of this game have got me interested in the authors' full-length ChoiceScript game set in this universe. I'm eager to see how the satire and baking competitions work in what's likely a more polished game.

Choice-based games lend themselves really well to romance simulators -- and this is of course a very popular genre for this style of IF -- the idea being that our choices in our interactions with other people add up positively (toward attraction), negatively (toward repulsion), or just don't register (toward neutrality). It's easy to quantify these interactions and to add in enough additional variables to make things interesting. Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates bills itself as a romance simulator, but indicates from the jump that this game is going to do something quite different with the genre...

There are several things going on with the premise that make this an incredibly compelling -- and also very strange -- romance game. First, this is a work of historical fiction, exploring the romantic relationship between two real people from history. The ancient Greek setting, with very different ideas about relationships and sexuality and far removed in time from the contemporary moment, adds a good deal of ambiguity and uncertainty about what to expect. More notably, though, are the particular people involved and the point in time at which the romantic encounter is occurring: Xanthippe, Socrate's second wife, has bribed her way into the jail cell where the philosopher sits captive the night before his execution. Sex is probably on the menu for a last night rendezvous...along with some other not so happy thoughts.

Victor Gijsbers states in the introduction to the game some of his intent behind this premise: to complicate the figure of Xanthippe, of whom we know little about and the little we do know does not cast her in a favorable light. It's impossible to judge someone from a few lines in the annals of history (it's hard enough to judge contemporaneous personages!), and this is the utility of interactive fiction: to carve out an alternative imaginary, our own illuminated cave. Gijsbers depiction of Xanthippe (and Socrates for that matter) is rich and nuanced. Xanthippe has her problems, for sure, but she is presented as a powerful, intelligent, and really funny woman.

It's this woman that Socrates has fallen in love with and married, and through the course of the game, we learn about the complexity and depth of their relationship. So, yeah, the game starts with Xanthippe trying to seduce Socrates,(Spoiler - click to show) (and ultimately succeeding! at least in my playthrough, though I'd be curious to know if it's possible for the attempt at romance to flame out) but the conversation that develops touches on all aspects of their life together. There are so many beautiful, poignant moments that communicate the timelessness of love -- as well as the inescapable contingency of love.

There are just a couple minor aspects of the game that didn't work for me. First, I felt that the tone and diction of the game shifted in some jarring ways at times, from a somber and restrained tone to an upbeat, almost slapstick tone. The purpose of the tonal shifts is clear, in that the game has some powerful emotional extremes and contrasts, but this was not always done subtly in the text. It almost felt like the writing would go between different styles of translating ancient Greek literature: from Chapman's Homer to a retelling of the Odyssey in contemporary tongue. Xanthippe and Socrates would at times talk in quite quippy exchanges that just felt kind of out of place. I'll be clear that this was not the case on the whole, as the writing in general was strong, but Gijsbers didn't always land these shifts in emotionality.

The other issue was one of design. This is a choice-based game, though long stretches of the game did not present momentous choices. In fact, for much of the game, I didn't feel -- as the player -- that I had a real stake in determining how Xanthippe was directing the conversation (or her seduction attempts). I still very much enjoyed the ride, but a lot of the game felt like a shadow play being carried out before my eyes. There were definitely some key decision points,(Spoiler - click to show) (like when Xanthippe comes clean about her affair with Plato and confesses to Socrates whether this was just a fling or a serious relationship for her) but these typically were chances for the player to register their thoughts about the situation and not make choices that would initiate drastically different paths in the game itself.

This game has a really interesting premise -- you wake up and you're falling toward a void in the middle of cyclone, and you make sense of your predicament by grabbing onto a Fellow Faller and chatting about life, the afterlife (?), and your regrets. The game begins with the promise of a surreal short interactive story, but the interesting bits flatten out pretty quickly.

There are two aspects that could have been addressed that would have really livened up this game to make it the weird and engaging experience that I was hoping for. First, there's very little in the way of interesting characterization of either the protagonist or the Fellow Faller. This FF is described as Rock Star, and fits the bill pretty stereotypically (leather jacket, etc.). There's really just one time that the protagonist shares something about themself, and it's a memory without concrete details. We learn something about the Rock Star's regrets and his motivations for wanting to escape the terminal fall, but this (Spoiler - click to show)(feeling bad about leaving his partner) is also kind of bland and not developed with any specificity. Some distinctive characterization through interesting conversations that push beyond cliches would have made me care much more about these characters and their fates.

The other aspect that could have been addressed was the limited range of interactions and branching options. For most passages, there are a couple of the same interactions: to grab (onto your Fellow Faller), to dive, or to look. In most cases, these actions have the same kind of results. I get that the point of the game is to (Spoiler - click to show)dive into the unknown of the cyclone-void, perhaps dying or perhaps escaping back into life but these actions felt constrained and without real stakes. A game with a limited set of actions or a mostly linear trajectory can work well, but only if other aspects of the game are sufficiently robust to motivate the player -- perhaps if sometimes these actions led to unexpected results, or if the 'morale of the story' was not telegraphed so early on.

I absolutely loved Hannah Powell-Smith's Crème de la Crème, and so I've had the follow-up games set in the same universe on my to-play list for awhile. Noblesse Oblige does not directly continue the story of this previous game -- at least to my knowledge, none of the main characters from CdlC recur in Noblesse -- rather, this game tells its own captivating story while building out the history, culture, and social dynamics of the Creme universe from a quite different perspective. Powell-Smith's strong writing and sophisticated approach to romancing characters clearly ties this game to CdlC, but Noblesse is its own game in many important ways -- and a really good game at that.

Both the plot and the tone of Noblesse are very different from CdlC. In this game, you play as a college dropout who has taken a post as a tutor for the niece of a reclusive Countess. Instead of navigating your way up the social hierarchy as in CdlC, the protagonist of this game has to negotiate the challenges of a fall from their expected upward trajectory. In fact, one of the areas where I felt this game did better than its predecessor was in the bevy of choices that invite the player in to the protagonist's interior reflections and thoughts. In addition to external decisions and interactions with NPCs, the game offers several check-in decisions that enable the player to register how the character is feeling about themself and their situation. I felt like I had a much greater role in the character development of the protagonist than in CdlC.

The other major difference is the tone of the story. Powell-Smith fashions this game as a gothic romance in the vein of the Bronte sisters. The setting is an aging manor on a secluded, windswept island, and many things feel just a bit uneasy and out of place throughout the game. Early on in the game...(Spoiler - click to show)Pascha, your charge, howls outside during a stormy night before being captured and brought back inside the manor, all of which felt very much like a scene ripped from Jane Eyre. This tone is established nicely early on and Powell-Smith did an effective job of developing this mysterious, gothic atmosphere as you explore the manor and the rest of the island through proceeding episodes.

The overall structure and goals of Noblesse are somewhat similar to CdlC: you can romance characters and/or develop friendships while unraveling some intriguing mysteries that threaten to alter your situation and trajectory for the better or the worse, depending on your choices. While there's one really big mystery in CdlC ((Spoiler - click to show)the disappearance of the students into the mines), in Noblesse there are three mysteries that you can unravel, one for each of the three major non-player characters that you interact with.

This aspect of the design is the one minor issue that I had with the game. There are probably ways to develop relationships with each of these characters such that you can uncover all the mysterious backstories in one playthrough, but that strategy was not really appealing to me because to do so would have jarred with other plot, character, and romance-based decisions that I was making. I had an idea of what relationships I really wanted to focus on, and I would have had to go against the motivations that felt 'right' with how I was developing the protagonist for the sake of uncovering details that felt really key to the overall plot. I suppose this adds to the replayability, as I could focus on uncovering these other mysteries on subsequent playthroughs, but I just don't like this structure as much. I think I prefer games with the one Big mystery (as in CdlC) that the player can get at in many different ways rather than several different mysteries that can only be uncovered through many playthroughs.

For fans of CdlC, though, this is a must play if only for the new light that Noblesse adds on the bigger universe of these games. Powell-Smith brings in tons of rich detail on Jezhani culture, mentioned somewhat in CdlC but as a minority group to the dominant Westerlind culture. As a tutor coming from the outside, you learn about Jezhani religion and social mores and need to reflect on how you relate to them -- as a neutral observer or really embracing them as your own. As with CdlC, this involves bigger questions and tensions about class and social dynamics that push past the bounds of the game and ask the player to think about oppression, elitism, and cultural appropriation in our own world. Powell-Smith doesn't hit us over the head with these comparisons, but rather the richness with which she develops this world invites critical reflection that spills out beyond this fantasy universe.

Powell-Smith continues to build something really special with this addition to the CdlC universe. I'd recommend this game on its own as an intriguing gothic romance mystery, but of course it really shines within the broader context of the series of games.

Rent-a-Vice has the setup of a noir mystery story in a near-future cyberpunk setting: you're a private investigator, down on your luck and in debt, when a tantalizing missing persons case walks through your door, a case that will send you into the seedy underbelly surrounding a controversial virtual reality technology... Virtual Experience is a radical step beyond typical VR, offering the opportunity to connect directly into the experience of another person. While lauded as a tool for promoting empathy, VE has quickly fostered underground circuits of 'feeders' peddling in experiences of self-harm, addiction, and other vices.

The core mystery story is compelling enough, though the real pull of the game is the exploration of the thorny ethical questions prompted by VE. Does VE set up an inherently exploitative relationship between feeders and users? If VE neutralizes some social ills because people are partaking in vices virtually, does this warrant the damage done to the feeders? If feeders willingly enter into this work, does this justify the danger they put themselves in? The game does empower the player to take firm stances on these questions, though easy or straightforward answers are never supplied. The choice-based game mechanic is deployed very well to prompt the player to articulate their thoughts on these various questions and consider alternative viewpoints.

By exploring the ethical questions around VE and foregrounding issues of self-harm, self-destructive behavior, and suicide, the game delves into some very dark territory. Theodoridou does this responsibly, offering content warnings and ensuring that the player is aware of the difficult issues that they are going to confront. However, the game does not shy away from direct depictions and discussions of these topics. The player character has a tortured past (that the player in part gets to determine through their choices), and engaging this case brings that repressed trauma back to the surface. This adds some real stakes to working the case, and makes some parts of the game quite challenging. The introduction of these topics never feels cheap, though, as direct confrontations with the darkest applications of VE are really core to the game.

The game excels when it has the player exploring the complicated depths of VE, though there are some points where the stakes of the choices can feel forced and inauthentic. (Spoiler - click to show)For instance, there's a point where a feeder is almost surely going to commit suicide and, at that very moment, you get a call that your child has gone to the hospital. Choosing between your child and the feeder becomes a starkly binary choice in a way that doesn't serve the narrative and leads to an unsatisfying resolution in every case. There are a couple other points where the narrative falls back on noir tropes as narrative shortcuts. (Spoiler - click to show)The loan shark character, in particular, feels like a narrative shortcut throughout the game. They are never developed as a character and just show up to turn up the heat and add urgency to solving the case. These are minor issues in an otherwise great game, but the small dips in narrative quality feel more pronounced because of how strong the rest of the game is.

Overall, the game is a deep and honest exploration of some challenging issues, using a well-crafted cyberpunk conceit to shine a light on all-too-real psychological, emotional, and social concerns.