Ratings and Reviews by Passerine

The first thing I realize is that it hurts not having a back button. All the visual detail, snippets of backstory, and comments from the people who end up joining my party—what did they say before about the second interpreter? I have to slow down and pay attention. This is a good sign.

The buildup of suspense before my journey helps me prepare, and explains why my character knows so much and feels confident going on this journey in the first place. By the time I get out there, I’m pretty excited to see this saltwrack, as bleak as it is. I see rocks, lichen, iridescent worms. Some tentative connections to our world, maybe? But real-life concerns are just unsettling shapes in my peripheral vision. The saltwrack is overwhelmingly large. I’m getting lost in another world, and I really needed to get lost in another world.

I travel for many minutes/days until, how about that, I walk right up to the ominous location I’ve been searching for. Would you like to enter? the game asks. As I loiter at this choice point, I realize it’s absolutely crucial that this game has no back button.

Whether because of my choices or my groundless expectations, Saltwrack didn’t really feel threatening until it suddenly did, and I was appropriately disoriented, like the horror movie victim who doesn’t realize what they’re dealing with until it’s too late.

Things changed after that. I played a different game, the game of the victim trying to get back to safety. Let’s not worry about the details of my mistakes. I let my guard down, and I paid for it.

But the game eased me back into the real world without punishing me for any missteps. I can feel the emptiness of the routes I didn’t take in a way that echoes the boundlessness of the world I just visited. But the outcome of my adventure feels like mine.

Saltwrack luxuriates in the space between heavy-handed comparison with reality and abstract sci-fi fancy, leaving plenty of room for internal reflection and personal connection with the material. I would call it immersive. I would call it art. I would recommend it for anyone who feels like getting lost in a story, and I will be mining it for ways to improve my own writing. I think it’ll haunt me for a while.

The Purple Pearl accomplishes something that feels unique: mashing up a parser IF game and a split-team escape room. It feels like just the beginning of what a cooperative IF game could be, and playing it made me excited about the potential of multiplayer parser games, because it was a lot of fun!

I've played online escape rooms and co-op videogames with a similar flow: explore a space from your individual perspective; talk to your fellow player(s) about what you find and what you need; make progress by solving things together. It's a fun play style that lends itself surprisingly well to a text adventure, made possible in this case by two separate game files and codes swapped verbally between players. Like the type of games it seems inspired by, The Purple Pearl doesn't bother with a complex story or characters, but the simple, whimsical interactions make it a great showcase for the format.

One fortunate thing about this game's asymmetrical structure—with two players in two separate spaces—is that if there's ever a bottleneck where one player isn't taking the next necessary action, the other player doesn't have to just wait around. The structure seemed totally linear in retrospect, but we didn't know it at the time: both of us got stuck at least once, but even if you're not sure whether you're responsible for the next step, the thing to do is look closely at everything nearby, which sets you up well for the next step after that. (Side note, we probably wouldn't have gotten stuck if we hadn't been too stubborn to use hints.)

Also, I wasn't sure about this when I started, but it became clear pretty quickly that sharing information with the other player is a good idea. The puzzles in your version of the game are yours to interact with, but sharing what you see makes the game even more collaborative.

I appreciate The Purple Pearl as an experiment in form, and I hope more people will follow its lead. But I also want to emphasize that it's not just a serviceable proof of concept, but a fun game that I'd recommend playing over voice chat with a friend.

It’s not easy to make an impact with such a short game, but I was moved by this cameo of two friends who’ve grown apart, who live in different worlds, who can’t turn back time. The writing is minimalist yet expressive, and all the design choices felt intentional and meaningful: not just the audiovisual ones, but using a choice-based format to explore the limitations of our choices, using timed text to highlight the malleability of time, using cycling links to evoke hesitation or indecision. You Can’t Save Her surprised and transported me, and I’ll come back to it as an example of how beautiful and complete a short game can be.