Ratings and Reviews by ccpost
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The apocalypse will happen off-screen, March 11, 2024This 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.
To the Oversea, again, February 16, 2024You 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.
To fry or not...the choice is yours!, October 18, 2023I 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.
The Platonic Ideal of a romance simulator (almost), October 11, 2023Choice-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.
Interesting premise falls flat, October 7, 2023This 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.
Gothic romance mystery that adds to Crème de la Crème universe, September 17, 2023I 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.
Dark cyberpunk mystery exploring larger ethical questions, June 23, 2023Rent-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.
Too-fast historical game in an extremely compelling setting, May 17, 2023As a librarian by day, I was extremely excited to dive into this game. I also adore Kevin Gold's other near-future Choice of Games title, Choice of Robots, so the prospect of another choice-based game by Gold—where you play as the librarian of Alexandria no less!—had me in the bag. While I enjoyed the game overall and really appreciated Gold's treatment of the historical setting, the game had some major mechanical hangups that made it difficult for me to get fully invested in the game.
The basic premise of the game is that you play as the incoming librarian of Alexandria (based on the historical figure of Eratosthenes); buoyed by your reputation as a scholar and inventor, Ptolemy III has contracted you to tutor his son, and heir to the throne, Ptolemy IV. Through the game you make decisions about how to best educate a future ruler, contend with rival influences at court, and negotiate complicated cultural tensions with the subjugated Egyptians.
All of this is very compelling, and I love the setup of the game and the various tensions and conflicts driving the major decision points. However, the too-fast pacing of the game keeps the promise of this premise from being fulfilled. The chapters are relatively brief, especially compared to other Choice of Games titles, and there are huge temporal leaps between the chapters. This makes sense to some degree, as the game covers an expansive time span, but the combination of very short episodes and significant gaps between episodes made it feel like I was having very little impact on the story.
The other mechanical flaw (for me) was a far too direct causal relationship between choices and consequences for the narrative. Now, players of choice-based games expect there to be some logic connecting the choices they make and the consequences of their choices as they impact the story, but many decision points in this game just felt especially artless. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)after killing Sosibius, a rival advisor to Ptolemy IV, the player is presented with a very simplistic decision point: take Sosibius' place as a manipulative influence or advise Ptolemy wisely from now on. Many decision points like this are overly straightforward without any nuance on how they might impact the story and without requiring any insight into non-player character's potential motivations or desires.
There is some payoff at the end of the game. (Spoiler - click to show) Based on the choices you make throughout the game, you arrive at one of seven entirely different endings that illustrate the long-term historical effects of the life you lead. I ended up with a scene of a modern-day 13 year old girl reading a work written by Eratosthenes and pondering its importance. These wildly branching endings is a cool effect, but it seems more like these different endings are the real story. However, this payoff at the end was ultimately not fulfilling, a substitute for having a gameplay experience that more fully rewards your choices in the moment.
I'd still recommend this game—how else are you going to know what it was really like to be the librarian of Alexandria??—but to go in expecting a very brisk romp through this history rather than a fully developed, character-driven story.
Unsettling game about the deforming power of belief, May 8, 2023This is a short work of interactive fiction that functions in the way of a good short horror story: the game strongly establishes its premise, gets the player invested quickly, and concludes with a swerve into an artful and unsettling ambiguity that asks the player to mull over the brief piece of fiction.
I started my playthrough with a general idea of the gist of the story -- (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist witnesses the slow deformation of their father, who obsessively digs a network of tunnels beneath the house -- and found the execution very well done, achieving a deeply felt sense of unease as the protagonist progresses through their story. The player has some sense that the protagonist has survived, as they have lived to tell the tale, but the player also has a sense that the protagonist has been altered -- haunted -- in some essential way. Rather than totally subverting the player's expectations, the game works by slowly unraveling the full scope of the final weird and traumatic encounter with the father.
What I found myself going back to and mulling over after finishing the game was the motivation for the father's digging. This, never fully explained but suggestively characterized, was the really disturbing part of the story. What would cause someone to abandon their life and commit to a toilsome, endless digging? Lutz introduces just enough of the father's perspective to give players insight into his twisted mind while keeping the father still essentially obscured, unknowable.
As a more or less linear story, the game achieves this unsettling experience through subtle atmospheric effects and gripping writing. The linear structure of the game makes the draw toward the encounter with the father feel dreadfully inevitable; but the conclusion, in its ambiguity, makes any consequence, from damnation to salvation, feel possible...but we know in our core that whatever happens after the game ends can't be good.
Poetic, hyper-episodic space saga, April 11, 2023The main narrative tension driving this game is a quest to free your titular vagrant twin from cryo sleep after they've been abducted by some unsavory types. The task is simple but the road is arduous as you then proceed to earn enough credits to free your twin, exploring a vast and varied intergalactic environment in the process. It's both the elemental story -- rescue your family from malevolent forces -- and the enormous scope of the world in which this story is set that give this game the feel of a sci-fi epic poem.
As is the case for many epic poems, the structure of Superluminal is episodic and the rhythm is that of a melodious and mnemonic repetition. The player character traverses numerous worlds (several dozen in my case and likely more left unexplored!), interacting with a diverse cast of characters coming from a wide range of socioeconomic situations and cultural backgrounds to buy, sell, and trade your way up to the requisite 500k credits. Each world to visit is evocatively described in just a scant few words and, similarly, every character is brought to life with a terse, smartly composed description. Truly, reading the description of each new planet brought me such great joy -- to take one example, at random, "slender megastructures rise gleaming from the silvery continents below, arcing over oceans" -- and I was heartened to re-encounter familiar descriptions as I revisited planets, akin to a Homeric bard repeating "wine-dark sea" for the umpteenth time.
The game itself is also very compelling. There's a bit of a puzzle trying to match the odds and ends that you're able to buy off inhabitants on one planet to the needs and wants of inhabitants on other scattered planets. Each of these matches is something of a hyper-episode in the larger story. The pared down mechanics (certain verbs common to IF games are stripped out, and there were no instances that I ran into of needing to play 'guess the verb' to advance) make the game easy to jump into, even for a newcomer to the genre, while the variety of ways to earn credits keeps the game interesting. The main quest can be completed relatively quickly (Spoiler - click to show)as there's a large but fairly easy job that will earn the player character sufficient credits to free their twin, but this is only a small portion of the joy of this game. As with many epics, the pleasure is not in summarizing the main story line but luxuriating in the encyclopedic details of a fully-realized world. This is a poetically charged reference book -- the highest compliment coming from someone who adores reference works!
Superluminal achieves one of the finest balancing acts between the literary and game elements that make the best interactive fiction so compelling. This is an epic poem that you are play as well as read.
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