Ratings and Reviews by OverThinking

View this member's profile

Show reviews only | ratings only
View this member's reviews by tag: Love/Violence Jam SeedComp SeedComp 2023
Previous | 31–40 of 191 | Next | Show All


Under the Cognomen of Edgar Allan Poe, by Jim Nelson
OverThinking's Rating:

The Garbage of the Future, by AM Ruf
OverThinking's Rating:

Deliquescence, by Not-Only But-Also Riley
OverThinking's Rating:

House of Wolves, by Shruti Deo
OverThinking's Rating:

The Shyler Project, by Naomi Norbez (call me Bez; e/he)
OverThinking's Rating:

You Can't Save Her, by Sarah Mak
OverThinking's Rating:

Turn Right, by Dee Cooke
OverThinking's Rating:

Uninteractive Fiction, by Damon L. Wakes (as Leah Thargic)
OverThinking's Rating:

How Dare You, by alyshkalia
A brutal breakup, July 8, 2024
Related reviews: Love/Violence Jam

This one is rough, emotionally. Your partner (Heron) is breaking up with you (Tiel), and you are NOT taking it well. Your goal is to change eir mind. There are several implemented strategies to try, ranging from the desperate to the manipulative to the despicable.

The world feels deeply implemented. Of particular note is that taking inventory gets the response You are carrying nothing but a broken heart. You can then examine the heart. That’s the kind of detail work I love in a parser. “Undo” also has a poignant response in place of its usual function. There are a few disambiguation moments that could be smoother—both your and Heron’s hands are implemented, and doing something to “hands” doesn’t default to Heron’s, unlike most other actions.

One thing that didn’t quite work for me was that trying one of the “game ending actions” precluded trying any of the others. The picture I’d built of Tiel in my mind was of someone who wasn’t about to take ‘no,’ and that he takes one particular ‘no’ over another doesn’t quite hit for me. On my first play I tried to kiss Heron, and then after ey rejected me finally I tried crying—a reasonable response in my mind’s version of Tiel’s mind. But I was told I couldn’t do that and must simply leave. I know the suggestion does risk a bit of combinatorial explosion and a less tight form, but unique responses for those kinds of pathetic or petty reactions after the goal is already lost would go a long way for me.

It’s a very short game, and worth playing multiple times to explore all of the options. It knows what it wants to do and does it well. The author’s notes say it’s based on a game from last year’s Anti-Romance Jam—I may have to check that one out next.

You can log in to rate this review, mute this user, or add a comment.

Endings, by Grim
An uncrossable divide, July 5, 2024*
Related reviews: Love/Violence Jam

This is a game about painful miscommunication. The divide between our two characters is represented visually by the screen being split in half—one of them speaks in black text on a white background, the other in white on black (I’ll use the colors of their respective backgrounds to refer to them—White and Black). From the beginning, their viewpoints are intentionally diametrically opposed. They offer contrasting perspectives on the same subject: from journaling to safety, they disagree on just about how everything is to be done.

White has hurt Black, and Black loves them anyway. Black helps White change into something that won’t hurt so much, but White chafes at the constriction. In the end, they even disagree about how to proceed with their relationship: to cement it into a future, or end it outright.

The prose is lush, the words carefully chosen for maximum impact. Every sentence brims with both affection and old, scabbed hurt. The melancholy that suffuses the piece is only heightened by the fact that we’re not invited to identify particularly strongly with either party. We experience and empathize with both of their perspectives at once, which only compounds the grief. Well done stuff.

One small note: there’s no scrollbar in the iframe, so if you’re not playing in full screen it’s possible for the text to disappear past the bottom and be inaccessible.

* This review was last edited on July 8, 2024
You can log in to rate this review, mute this user, or add a comment.


Previous | 31–40 of 191 | Next | Show All