Ratings and Reviews by Passerine

The Red Pearls of Borneo is an investigative deduction game that feels a bit like Type Help crossed with Return of the Obra Dinn, but from a certain historical angle. In this story, you’re a psychic investigator looking into the fates of a client’s family members during an especially violent day in Borneo during World War II.

I played the version on itch.io (it's also on Steam), and there was a lot to like. Gameplay was smooth: after I got used to navigating the various menus and lists, it was impressive how easy it was to follow the story in nonlinear fashion and make connections without taking a bunch of external notes, even though I didn't use all the available tools. I thought the music and art added rather than subtracted. Some of the deductions felt very satisfying, and some of the plot twists too.

There were also some things I didn’t love: The dialogue was rough at times, there were many typos, and when I needed a hint, the game just told me what to do. A little more nuance to the hint system would’ve been nice, to make the player feel they’re still doing at least some of the work. Also, the final sequences got a little confusing, both emotionally and logically, I think because there was extra content added to the game later on. I wonder if the original pre-DLC version might’ve had a more balanced final act.

One more thing: There’s really no comfortable way to answer the question at the beginning that asks if you want to see slurs or not. No, I actually don’t want to, but I can’t just forget the option is there (plus even if you say no, they’re just censored out). And it feels like everyone says slurs, even the player character. Maybe it is realistic, but maybe realism is not always the most fun choice!

Ultimately, I’m glad I played this game, and I enjoyed puzzling out what happened to everyone, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it broadly—though WWII history buffs might especially enjoy it.

Cryptid Hunter is fairly minimalist but evocatively written, which pretty much describes my favorite kind of game.

The title is mostly self-explanatory, but it leaves out something important: this is sneakily a puzzle game. The story feels quite adventurous, but then the gameplay boils down to focusing on the details of your uncanny encounters and observing the traits that make each entity more or less likely to be your quarry.

The gameplay is robust for such a short game. Because the monsters on your to-capture list and their descriptions vary, it is in fact replayable, and I was engaged enough to play through a few times until I got the hang of it and saw all(?) of the endings.

The creatures themselves are inventive, and reading along with the search was entertaining on its own. So the presence of actual game mechanics was a nice surprise, and the pattern matching felt well-balanced to boot. I also appreciated small additions like being able to take photos or do other interactions in certain cases. A few more variations like that would’ve made the world even more rich.

With all those features as the setup, the moment of trepidation before clicking “Capture” fulfilled the promise of the title.

Mashing story and puzzles together is hard, even when the puzzles aren’t cryptic crossword clues. But this game proves it can really work!

Stooping to Diplomacy is about cryptic crossword clues in kind of the same sense that Typing of the Dead is about typing. It’s not quite as preposterous, though, because there’s a reasonable explanation for the central mechanic: to help Lephrea the vampire form alliances with the animals of the Kansas City Zoo, you need to decipher cryptic hints from her sass-talking Ouija board. So, ok, maybe it is a little preposterous.

Lephrea and the Ouija board may be at odds, but the Ouija board has no animosity towards the player, so you don’t have to be a genius at cryptic crosswords: the game will walk you through them if you need help. (After all, this game was written based on the EnigMarch prompt “hint,” so hinting is a pretty central mechanism.) So this is a great way to learn how to parse and solve cryptic clues if you want to, and maybe even a way to train yourself to be less rigid about taking hints. Also, it’s really two games snaking around each other, with the cryptic clues providing help for the in-world trading sequence and vice versa, which just feels really unique and cool.

Puzzles aside, I’ve enjoyed all the glimpses of Lephrea as a side character in the Little Match Girl series (and the related The Board of Regents, written for the previous year’s EnigMarch). Her personality is so strong, and an unlikely vessel for character humor. But we can’t identify too much with her as an antihero here, because she reminds us that she is not a cool Jessica Jones type with a good heart, but a soulless vampire who will (with our help!) do things that repulse us. In particular, the scene where (Spoiler - click to show)she causes the probable demise of a cute baby animal was a blatant wake-up call for me. If I didn’t trust the author, I might have closed the browser window and walked away at this point. But the space between the player and the player character kept opening up and closing back in, making it too tempting to go along with her scheme. And this is the moment when I realized the game itself has vampiric qualities.

Also, the finale is so satisfying/chilling. This is a really good game.

Somewhere down the line, I can imagine myself thinking: What was that movie about the vampire who took a midnight train going...somewhere? Oh, right, it was IF. And that wasn’t voiceover narration, it was internal links with insights into vampire culture and physiology. Because this game is largely linear but rich and compelling, like a good movie or play. And you can think while reading: about the nature of evil, about what trust is worth, about what kind of brokenness can be redeemed.

Vampire stories start to seep together after a while, like, what’s a good analogy, watercolors. But this one feels fresh. The rules seem unstable and not entirely known, in a way that feels truer to real life than to fantasy.

This game was written for ShuffleComp, and I enjoyed looking at what songs served as inspiration after playing. It’s impressive how they all contributed something to the story.

This game doesn’t seem to be available currently, which is too bad, because it was a really fun read.

The story is framed as a newly discovered Goosebumps manuscript by R.L. Stine that was never published, but it’s easy to forget that once you get into the story. Fortunately, R.L. Stine himself pops in occasionally with some tangential author’s notes, to remind you that what you’re reading is just a made-up story by a writer of young adult thrillers, thank goodness.

The writing does feel like Goosebumps at times, but mostly it’s its own thing: wacky and cinematic and nostalgic and eventually quite disturbing as the horror element rises to the surface. The mix of comedy and horror is an oddly effective foundation for a heartfelt story of a child with a neglectful and cruel family who just needs to be loved, and if the humans around her can’t do that, an escaped kangaroo may be the next best thing. Of course, nothing in Goosebumps is simple, and as she learns more about her new friend (Spoiler - click to show)(through telepathy, nothing weird about that), she’s faced with a choice that’s explicitly laid out in the text: Birth family or found family?

This isn’t Give Yourself Goosebumps, so the game is completely linear (aside from a few text expansions), which means you don’t have a choice as the inevitable unfolds. But narratively and emotionally, the question does have a satisfying answer.

As dark as it gets (here is the horror part), the story ends on a hopeful note as the protagonist picks up the pieces, before the frame tale returns and we are left to wonder: Why did R.L. Stine write such an unusual story? Why (perhaps this is easier to answer) was it never published? And where did he learn all those curse words?