Ratings and Reviews by Passerine

Important context: I have not successfully played any of the Social Democracy games. I tried, but history was not my friend until recently, and it’s hard to immerse myself in the gameplay when I only understand about 5% of what’s going on.

But Lilac Song is a short story with no strategizing required. The scale is small enough for me to catch the vibe, and the premise is entirely laid out in the beginning: “Berlin, July 19, 1932. … Your name is Sibylle Hoffmann. Twenty-nine years old, a servant, an amateur scholar of mathematics and politics, and a transvestite.” You have an interest in politics, both academic and personal. You have the ear of a politician. And by playing through the simulation game you created, you’ve developed some ideas about what’s needed to defend the Republic.

I’m glad this game exists, because I feel like I got a different angle on Social Democracy by playing it. This approach was immersive in its own way, especially with the period music and artwork to help set the scene.

When I realized this story was being told from the perspective of someone who made a game about saving democracy in 1932, I got chills. We’re here in the 2020s writing games about saving democracy! Did I think it was only present-day people trying to capture our moment in history? We wonder if the games we’re creating will actually make any real difference. Did I ever consider that people throughout history were probably wondering the same thing? Drawing a direct line to the past this way expanded my thinking about our current predicament.

Anyway, you can reflect on how to make a difference, but ultimately there’s not much you can do—which is also more relatable to me than trying to meddle with actual politics. The ending feels very pessimistic, which is entirely appropriate. But one late-game question was the key for me: “Do you believe that a game could really save Germany? Or is this nothing more than an enjoyable diversion?”

I had to really think about that one, through space and time.

In many ways, Quirky Test reminds me of the other spoonerism-based wordplay games I’ve played by this author, but this one is different. This one feels more like a love letter to parser games. The author is present, giving commentary: about the point of games, the history of parser IF, the differences between Inform and Adventuron, the process of making the game and the reasons for certain design choices. Even without the tutorial on, I still felt the author acting as a tour guide as I walked around the world they created. This is a really unique and interesting approach.

It almost goes without saying that a wordplay game must also be a lighthearted comedy. But this one felt more like a drama to me, with abstract riddles leading to poignant reflections on self-growth. There were certainly light moments, but also strife. Sometimes solving a problem was narratively satisfying, but other times the recipient of our help wasn’t all that grateful. Unlike the goofy wordplay romps I remember from the olden days of parser games, this one takes the situation seriously. Like when you gain confidence as a status change, to solve a later puzzle. Even in abstractness, the proceedings feel connected to the real world, much unlike a more escapist adventure.

I JUST GOT THE TITLE, I wrote in my notes halfway through the game.

I also appreciated the visual design choices. The art is quirky and fun, and despite all the text I alluded to above, it doesn’t feel like a ton of reading because of the thoughtful use of color to emphasize different elements of the text. I tend to get impatient with large chunks of text, but I didn’t even notice how much I was reading here. The checkmarks on paths that are already completed also make the game easier to navigate.

So this game has a lot of affordances for people new to parser games, but it also presumes you’re not a wholly inexperienced gamer: there are references to the larger gaming world, and something like RNG might not be spelled out. The sheer amount of information might also be overwhelming for some beginners. But a lot of it (including Graham Nelson’s entire bill of players’ rights, plus commentary) is optional, so people can explore at their whim.

In fact the game feels designed to be explored in leisurely fashion, with added replay value from all the bonus points and achievements as well as a New Game+ with extra footnotes and the ability to skip rooms that aren’t required. As for me, I’m happy with the time I spent in this world, and I got something else from my playthrough too:

Most of the time, I’m not thinking about the level of remove between the game I’m playing and the author who created it. We expect that the author will create a separate little world, then let go of it. This game made me think about that unspoken rule and reminded me that rules are sometimes meant to be broken.

Trench Line is a stealthy/actiony/parsery vignette that takes place on an active battlefield, a setting I’m not at all familiar with, either in life or in games. But it felt very real, both in the sense where a story immerses you in a life-threatening situation and also in the sense where you’re in an escape room being tasked with disarming a bomb when you have no idea how to do that in real life. But even though I needed a nudge to figure out how to use the radio, it was satisfying to get the hang of the protocol and make my way out of danger.

The writing was straightforward yet evocative. Even though it mostly just described the pertinent information for the current moment, it painted a larger picture of what must have happened to lead to this point. The random per-turn events and descriptions of the transitions between rooms added a lot of flavor. Occasional use of bold and italics commanded my attention (at least at first—once I realized the italic events were repeating, I started becoming desensitized to the battlefield, to my benefit, at least for the moment).

The choice to start in the middle of a battle was intense. I felt I had some info about the situation, but not enough to honestly assess my role in the conflict—which is fine. That might not be on the player character’s mind in a situation like this anyway. Especially not one who came here looking for easy money.

If this was the intro of a larger game (or, if not the very beginning, an early stage), I can see myself continuing to play and getting into the story. I’m curious about how I ended up in that place, on that side. But the game works well as a small action game with a modest goal, and it’s not like anything I’ve played before. That’s pretty great for a debut work!

Disclosure: I am biased in this game’s favor because I managed to finish it on my own (though, fuller disclosure, without the good ending). It sure does feel nice to not resort to a walkthrough!

Surely it helped that this game was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, so it’s extra approachable—not that that means it’s easy in the puzzle department, just that it felt very smooth. The map and puzzle flow are both fairly small, which also keeps things manageable. Including a tutorial is a big part of TALJ, and this one was fantastic: clear, concise, and easily distinguished from the gameplay (since it used a different font). But beyond all that, the puzzles themselves were obviously crafted with care. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)at the point where you can go north to find a gnome or south to find an undine, the game gently urges you to walk past both of them in turn and experience failure; after you’ve observed their behavior and figured out how to sidestep each of them, things get more complicated, but now you have what you need to work out a successful course of action. All along the way, the puzzle design is very effective at leading the player to the solution without pointing right at it, creating a satisfying moment of insight.

Also, zapping things out of existence momentarily was just plain fun as a central mechanic. I enjoyed messing around with the weapon, and the part at the end where (Spoiler - click to show)you have to zap yourself to avoid an explosion was a great culmination of the premise. I wish I hadn’t already played around enough to try it earlier in the game, because it would’ve been an A+ aha moment.

I also appreciated the narrative choices in this game. We’re thrown into the middle of a story, playing only a small role in what seems to be a larger fantasy political drama. There’s no need for a detailed backstory in the intro. We have our role to play, and it feels like the right size for the task ahead. But that’s not all we get: throughout the game are places and objects that provide environmental storytelling, frescos expanding the world, and moments where the game offers us glimpses of a point of view (one small example: “[>x straw] It gestures at comfort without providing any. Which is worse than just having nothing at all”). Just like the puzzle design, the subtle storytelling stands back and lets players work things out for themselves.

Overall it’s a harmonious effect, with only a couple moments when things felt noticeably calculated. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)when my mapping sylph started narrating pertinent information about the undine’s actions in a different room, I was surprised that it had that power, and I wondered if it was added to reduce confusion for the player. I think it felt especially conspicuous because the power only came up once. But among all the careful design, I’m not about to ask the game to be messier, so this is truly an observation more than a complaint.

The other thing I wasn’t expecting was (Spoiler - click to show)the logic when it came to disappearing things inside other things. I couldn’t imagine how to save Manzio because it didn’t feel intuitive to me that the bag’s contents would stay inside it while invisible. It’s entirely possible this is set up in the game and I just missed it. But either way, it’s an optional discovery, so using the hints for that part was good enough for me.

And then comes that satisfying ending. Even though we’ve already seen (Spoiler - click to show)three of the depicted elementals, it was exciting to encounter the salamander and feel that suspense and then the moment of insight I already mentioned. And then we exit in the middle of a larger story, just like we entered. Sweet harmony.

This review is for the preview version submitted to the 2026 Review-a-thon. I’m going to assume people reading this won’t mind spoilers.

As a player, I don’t usually have a lot of patience for long descriptions and am not especially drawn to world building, and Isekai is packed with both of those things—yet in the end I largely enjoyed it. For 2+ hours I got sucked into the world and the story, despite some uneven elements and rough edges. With some careful editing, I think this could be a really compelling, dare I say wholesome game.

I haven’t played the previous games in this series, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I spent a long time in the first room, looking at everything. And there is a lot to look at in this game (“Which do you mean, (1) the aqua girl’s eyes, (2) the aqua girl’s face, (3) the aqua dress, (4) the aqua girl’s ears, (5) the girl in aqua, or (6) the aqua girl’s hair?”). I almost got overwhelmed. Then I realized looking at things is the main mechanic of this game, even more than in the average parser game, which actually makes a lot of sense in a story about waking up in someone else’s body in a strange world. Ludonarrative consonance! Anyway, whenever I got tired of reading descriptions (again, this is a me thing), I could skim them and get the idea. The important things were clear enough. The italic suggestions that sometimes showed up at the bottom of a description helped move things along.

The thing I thought was particularly strong was the pacing. There was a whole series of revelations along the way, doled out at regular intervals, which kept me interested in exploring to learn more. Up front you realize you’re in a woman’s body, of course. Then you realize you’re an elf, a specific elf, a specific elf with two wives, and you all have magical abilities. The dominos are set up for the explosive final realization (which I’ll get back to later). And I thought the finale really delivered, with revelations every step of the way as I left the library and walked to the landing pad to meet up with my spouses.

Sci-fi/fantasy is not usually my favorite (it’s probably the world-building thing), but when it's truly transportive it can feel therapeutic, and there’s something comforting about spending time in a world that doesn’t have all the obstacles and injustices that we have. This game’s many world-building details made me think about our own society, and how a different life is possible. What if different species lived together in harmony? Wouldn’t it be nice to not worry overmuch about a wardrobe malfunction? How would life be different if people weren’t concerned with using the toilet in front of each other? I’m not sure I’d ever given that last one much thought in the past, but now I have.

I also enjoyed the gameplay elements that weren’t just about looking at things. The puzzly moments where you have to read documents in order of complexity in order to get better at reading the language—the diplomas in particular—were a good example of melding gameplay with storytelling to make the experience more immersive.

The main thing that made the game less cohesive for me, I think, was the portrayal of the player character. Throughout most of the game, I couldn’t tell if the PC, aka the person who got isekai’d in the intro, was supposed to be a specific character with his own personality or a generic PC who anyone could project themselves onto. His characterization seemed founded on being 1) curious about this strange world, 2) fascinated by women’s bodies, and 3) unusually knowledgeable about math and astronomy. But since we didn’t get any concrete background details about him (e.g. name, occupation, what year he’s from, where he was before this happened), it felt less like he was a specific character, and more like an everyman speaking with the author’s voice.

Either way, the PC’s point of view became jarring to me because of the stereotypes and objectification peppered throughout the narration. Nothing I saw was overtly negative (the game is open about being accepting of differences), but there were multiple mentions of the “feminine knack” for improving one’s appearance, for example, and I can confidently say we don’t all have that knack. The mystery and beauty of the PC’s body is emphasized (“You feel more connected to this charming, gorgeous and exotic elfin body”), with far more attention paid to her large bosom than her six-fingered hands, for example. It feels like being a woman and being an elf are treated as equally shocking, which won’t be the case for all readers. Moments like that broke the immersion for me. I can picture a version of this game where we get clearer personality details about the PC that explain why he would be especially concerned with her ample bosom. I also can picture a more adult version of this game where the anatomical differences are an even bigger part of the allure. I found it perplexing how this game walked a line in between those two possibilities.

So that was my thinking for most of the game, and then came the late revelation that the main character has been Etuye all along, and her soulmancy was so effective that she got stuck believing she was someone else. This was an extremely cool moment! (It also helps explain why this guy can calculate astronomical positions and convert decimal to duodecimal in his head.) This realization made me wish even more that the game had teased more of the past-life PC’s background, so that the reveal would be even more of an aha moment. The intro could be a good place for this, since it was uncharacteristically brief.

Speaking of which, my other main wish would be to make everything shorter. I enjoyed “looking at things” as a mechanic, but it got tiring, and most of the descriptions could convey the same thing in half as many words. Just as an example, here’s a snippet from the game:

“You’re surprised at the ease of actually donning for the first time a tight, form-fitting culotte around your legs and hips, pulling them up to fit it around your waist with elegant, gracious and agile hip and finger movement, leavingneither wrinkles nor creases, like you have always elegantly and graciously donned female form-fitting garments, with that feminine knack for excellent appareance.”

Compare that with something like this:

“You don the form-fitting culottes, pulling them over your legs and hips to fit smoothly around your waist with surprising agility, as if you’ve always worn garments like this.”

Word count is an artistic choice, of course, and many people like lengthy descriptions. However, for a general audience, I do think cutting back on words would make the game more approachable. A diligent copyedit would also make the game read more smoothly—there weren’t too many confusing parts, but the volume of typos did slow me down a bit.

So, overall, this game is promising and I would totally read more of this story (though I think this segment could totally stand alone as its own installment). I enjoyed the journey of discovery the game took me on, and the story is threaded through with heart and optimism, as well as world-building that even I could appreciate. In an ideal world, I would like to be able to identify with the protagonist more—or else see more clearly why they are the way they are, without giving away the central conceit—though perhaps I’ll have to wait until the next chapter.

You’re sitting in your house and you’ve just finished breakfast. You see a newspaper headline about a suspicious person who’s recently moved into the neighborhood and just might be a witch. You decide you’d like to do some snooping around town and find out for yourself.

This is a very funny call to action for a text adventure, and All That Shimmers… contains plenty of chummy humor to match the premise. The writing is both functional and charming, with lots of amusing details about the people and places in your neighborhood. Suspicious things keep happening, and the narration tells you just how suspicious you are about it. And you are!

As for the puzzles, these are all pretty much the standard pick-up-and-use-things variety. Nothing particularly devilish, more a way to make you feel like you’re investigating a mystery. And you do! A couple highlights: (Spoiler - click to show)Including a helpful ghost as hint mechanism was inspired, and it made me laugh when, after all the setup about how good your hearing is, you need to crack a safe purely by ear, instead of, like, finding the combination.

I couldn’t tell at first if this was going to be a straightforward old-fashioned text adventure or if it would attempt to subvert expectations by making the witch a good guy or something like that. Turns out (Spoiler - click to show)it’s the first one. But the game doesn’t feel old-fashioned, either in tone or challenge level.

This game was an entry in (and won!) PunyComp 2025, which had a requirement that the player must interact with an animal. And the animal interactions were fun! Unlike some other text adventures, these interactions are not violent. (+1 bonus point for the great response to “>pet mouse.”)

I did spot a few typos, so it probably could use another editing pass, but nothing that gets in the way of enjoying the adventure.

A Garden of Impossible Objects is a visual novel that explores and makes tangible the experience of bearing witness to a family member’s grief. This game combines thoughtful, vivid writing, graphics, and sound to capture the surreal disappearance of meaning that comes with the death of a loved one.

The writing is wonderful. The evocative description of driving on a dirt road, arcane allusions to the oddities of an expansive garden, a throwaway line hinting at the narrator’s father’s death—everything points at the idea of the blank space, the unknown. On a broad level, the storytelling dances around and then gradually hones in on what’s missing. I found it very affecting as an illustration of how someone’s death is not just the loss of the person, but a million small things in the past, present, and future, and confronting any of those small losses holds open the wound for another moment.

It’s an interesting choice that the grieving person is the narrator’s mother, rather than the narrator themself. Both perspectives could be explored this way, but this one gives the story an extra layer of curiosity and remove.

The listed genre for this story is horror, but my experience of it was more aching and tragic. The visual and symbolic representations of grief felt familiar and natural. It’s weird, but I felt at home in the mystery and tension of the situation. Though abstracted and exaggerated, it all felt very real.

recombinatorial is a short experience that leads the player character on an involuntary journey through a place of ruin and dislocation. You can select certain words and phrases along the way, or not. The story notes how people who arrive in this place purge their past and replace the old with new, which the interactivity mirrors with its fragmentation and regurgitation of words.

Mostly I got impressions. The urge to go north, more familiar from the popular media I grew up with as some kind of admirable drive to explore, is repurposed into something more like the mindless compulsion of an animal being puppeted by an invading fungus. I also sensed echoes of the siren calling travelers to the shores, with all the wrecked boats and bleached bones.

There is something else at the end of this journey, a meadow beyond the rough sea. Whether it’s real or imagined, I couldn’t tell. The distinction between yourself who must go north and those who stay behind in the narrows is something else I’m still not sure about. There’s a lot to ponder.

But it felt like the impressionism was the point here, and using more words to elucidate the details would be counterproductive. The concept fits well into the 500-word limit of the Neo-Twiny Jam, and the terse writing reads like smooth yet uncomfortable poetry. Reusing snippets at the end is an interesting way to stretch the boundaries, though it ended up being one final question mark for me since I couldn’t tell how or whether the end sequence connected to what I’d clicked earlier.

But the overall piece was intriguing and transportive. It felt quite cohesive as a game poem, even if I didn’t fully understand how everything connected.

I feel I’m not the intended audience for this game for various reasons, but I gave it a try anyway because it was entered into the Review-a-thon. It’s a very brief demo of a longer game about moderating "sexy selfies" on an online platform. And by sexy, they mean you will be seeing all the (illustrated) body parts.

The gameplay involves reading instructions from your presumably sexy supervisor about what type of photos are allowed, then moderating the selfies accordingly.

Since the gameplay involves accepting or rejecting images à la Papers, Please, the whole thing relies heavily on the graphics. Not to start questioning what IF is, but I think this game would be fundamentally different without images, if not wholly impossible. The "cheeky banter" parts are pretty slight (though it is a ~5-minute demo).

I have no particular complaints about the game, but as a hook for a longer experience, I think I’d need more evidence that it was going to build to something more substantial that wasn’t included in the demo.

This is a compelling, well-crafted short story with limited interactivity, written as speed IF, which means it's even better.

Worth noting up top: This game deals with religious themes, which is something I know very little about. And I’m gonna spoil the game in a minute.

At first this felt like a familiar story of a girl who has her eye on you in class being more...complex than you expected. In fact, that’s how I remember reading it when I first played, during Ectocomp last year. I felt sympathy for her, being continually spurned, and the final choice was easy: yes, the devil can repent. By the end I believed it was possible.

This time around I was more intrigued by the protagonist. Why are they so blasé about the possibly supernatural classmate who no one knows anything about? If their life is as lacking as it seems to be, why aren’t they at least a little bit tempted by power, money, knowledge?

It felt unusual that this devil was more interested in the random mortal who probably never has anything interesting happen to them than vice versa. Perhaps it’s rare to encounter someone who’s so empty that there’s nothing they want more than to be leveled with as an equal (“All I ever wanted was your name”). There’s definitely biblical lore here I’m missing, so instead I thought back to my younger days, when I spent a lot of time with people who didn’t value their own souls. (“You really don’t know what you’re worth, do you?” she says, and every high school crush flashes before my eyes.)

Anyway, this time the final choice was just as clear: no. Even this devil can’t try to be good.

The really cool thing about this game is that the protagonist arrives at a similar conclusion no matter which choice you (they) make. They had no real agency. As a reader, with an encounter like this, of course that’s how it ends. And a story that enthralls without surprise is doubly impressive.

I’m still in the middle of playing this game, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be done.

In this story, our focus character Aisling slogs through an endlessly looping tunnel. The setup evokes Exit 8, but with solo-Danganronpa levels of psychic torment. Point is, it’s a trap that Aisling was destined for, and proactively sought out, but does not deserve.

Something interesting is happening with perspective here. We observe the narrator as they observe Aisling’s struggle, which is also content Aisling is creating for their audience, based on someone else’s content they watched once and have been searching for. Later we learn the narrator created this experience for Aisling, without their consent or understanding. Does content have a value, or a cost? Is it good or bad to be watched? Is there a risk in consuming all this content—content like the video Aisling was looking for, which doomed them; content like the video Aisling is making right now? The arrows point in all directions.

I’ve made four loops and each time I ended up somewhere different. Every time I restart the game I notice something new—sometimes because something is slightly different based on my choices, and sometimes because nothing is. A couple times I clicked through the dialogue too fast—did something change that time? But I can't go back. Despite that this story has a straightforward script with occasional binary choices, the gameplay mirrors the setting. I’m lost in the maze. (This is a good maze.)

Nothing feels concrete, but as I look carefully, the details get clearer. I find references to a past audience being spectators to someone else’s public trauma. A ghostly figure appears: did they shed layers of themselves until they became transparent? Can we really learn from watching someone else’s struggle, or is it just gratuitous and damaging? Can I get to the bottom of this after a few more loops? Maybe there’s a path that will let me achieve the satisfaction of a True End or a 100% completed decision tree. Or maybe the paths will keep changing so I can never find what I’m looking for.

I will play at least four more times to find out.

Blossom, NY is interactive nonfiction—a researched history of a real community, presented like a brief guided tour. This is cool to see! I often wonder why there isn’t more interactive nonfiction storytelling. It would be interesting to see more experiments like this.

Structure-wise, this tour isn’t linear, because the game jumps around via hypertext, as if you’re encouraging your meandering tour guide to expound on whatever topic you’re particularly interested in. (I appreciated the game making sure we were situated by explaining how this would work ahead of time.) At first this nonlinear presentation made it harder for me to understand things, with historical facts revealed out of order, and even some future reflections from a couple years after the tour took place. But as the same highlighted topics kept appearing in different passages, I began to see more clearly the matrix of connections between present, past, and more distant past. I wonder if this repetitive presentation might actually help with learning.

Overall, this mini tour didn’t feel to me like storytelling as much as a history lesson for educational purposes. As a picky reader with a wandering mind, I felt myself grasping for a deeper present-day story layered over the history: Why was the narrator there? Who are they, and how did they discover what they know about this hamlet? When the narrator said something like “Last time I saw [this house] was before they put [the vinyl siding] on,” I wanted to hear the rest of that story. This is probably my IF habit kicking in, but I wonder if a little personal storytelling—whether true or fictional—would’ve made my visit more captivating. Then again, maybe here the point is to educate more than to captivate. And that it certainly did.

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.

(I was a playtester for this game.)

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?

This is a cute little game where you get to be a dog and choose your own mini adventure every day. It’s a graphical mobile-oriented game, but you can also play it on browser.

This game is so wholesome. I ate a treat someone gave me. I made friends with a duck. I went home and played with my toys. It was restorative to inhabit a dog’s life for a little while.

First of all, it needs to be said that I played this game with only a basic understanding of what iCarly is. But even though I didn’t know Carly, it was nice to spend a little time with her.

This game is not exactly what I expected The iCarly RPG to be, even though I knew not to expect iCarly the RPG. And it’s not a groundbreaking game, but it delivers something I enjoyed very much: an absurd and fragmented story with a beating heart buried underneath. There’s some laughs, some light horror, some references I didn’t understand—a little bit of a lot of things. I enjoyed the jarring mix of comedy and tragedy, unexpected left turns, unusual design choices, and especially the fourth wall breaking. I am a sucker for fourth wall breaking.

The story was not entirely scrutable (probably even for fans of the show), but the incompleteness suited the mood. The interactivity was simple but involving and meaningful, particularly at the end. And the RPG elements were well placed and effective (Spoiler - click to show)(this is a joke because they are so underused, but also I mean it because an ingredient used sparingly can add a lot). And then you get to feel good at the end!!

I really enjoyed this short twist on (a twist on) a classic fairy tale (Spoiler - click to show) (I'm referring to Shrek). A bunch of the dialogue and narration lines made me laugh, and just the way the story unfolded was funny too. This game has a lot of heart, and because the choices are so straightforward, you truly get to choose what kind of fairytale ending you want. (Checking out the other endings was fun too.) Plus it has adorable illustrations!

Despite a lot of typos and some pronoun mixups, I'd recommend this game widely, especially because a playthrough only takes about ten minutes.

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.

When I first played this game, I’d forgotten what I’d heard about the gameplay, so the main mechanic was a delightful surprise. I recommend playing it that way before reading any more about it (including the rest of this review).

What I love about games with this mechanic is that they give the story a sense of perspective that’s otherwise hard to convey, and not easy to stumble upon in daily life. Stay? has a heartening perspective on the human experience, both from a broad vantage point—whether looking back on a decades-long struggle, journeying to faraway places, or comparing the distant outcomes of different life choices—and from close enough to smell the flower petals on graduation day.

At first the world seemed oddly empty, with large chunks of the player character’s story omitted and certain characters missing the expected dimensionality. But as it looped and branched, the exponential growth of the story made it feel like this world—and probably also our world—was infinite. That sense of awe gets me every time.

Not every time loop game does this, but Stay? manages it with smart design choices: It includes less and less detail as you loop—because you only need to read the same paragraph so many times—but then starts adding in new details that would naturally become salient as you developed into a weary time traveler. New random asides felt perfectly timed for emotional impact, and new choices appeared just when the old options were getting stale. And there are kindnesses like offering a recap at the beginning of each loop, and rewarding the player for trying new options, even the boring ones like “no, I don’t want to hang out with anyone right now.”

Also, the story just felt good. Things are very wrong, but get to know the people and the world around you and you can learn how to put them right. It’s a powerful message, and it’s told through gameplay rather than, say, clunky dialogue.

When a game fundamentally changes the way I see the world by expanding my perspective, however briefly, I will give that game five stars even if it’s filled with bugs and typos. This game has a few, but it’s fine. They just provide further evidence that this game was written by someone who very much understands what it is to be human.

Of all the games I played from Spring Thing 2023, this one got stuck in my head the most, for a lot of reasons. In a genre that often leans on tropes, the story felt original. I really enjoyed the writing, which truly made me want to escape that horrible place. And rather than just being creepy for creepiness' sake, the game had a lot to say, too. It’s not easy to balance the choices and pace the suspense effectively in a story like this, but Etiolated Light hooked me from the beginning, made me think carefully about my choices, and kept things moving until the end, at which point I immediately wanted to play again to see if I could do better next time.

The thing I like most about this game is that it has a strong point of view. It made me think about the consequences of casually sacrificing others for our own benefit, about the illusion of light and whiteness representing safety, about the advantages of working together to upend an oppressive system. (I haven’t figured out if it’s actually possible to upend this particular system, but someday I’ll find all the endings and know for sure.)

Being able to choose the gender of some characters was also interesting: You don’t know what the consequences will be yet, so you’re as unaware as the player character in the opening scene. It also meshes well with the theme of an ongoing cycle that keeps drawing in new people, leaving everyone vulnerable. And in my case, the pairing of the first two characters ended up subverting the expected dynamic in an interesting way.

I ran across a few minor bugs and typos, but nothing game-breaking. The main thing I found myself missing was a little guidance on how to find the remaining endings—though I did enjoy untangling the story branches by attempting to make different choices.

In short, I think this is a game worth playing. All the endings I found were suitably grim, and some of them made me think about the story and the themes a bit differently, so I think it’s worth replaying, too.

I was a playtester for this game.

All of the Little Match Girl games follow the titular little girl on a delightful quest through time and space, and I look forward to them every year because they’re so adventurous and funny and surprising. But this one takes the series in a completely unexpected direction by adding a full-blown turn-based combat system, with party members and equippable items and everything. Usually I’m not playing IF (or any games) for the battles, but this game brought back the exact feeling of sitting in front of my little TV in 199X playing SNES with my brother, and it’s honestly amazing that a text adventure can do that.

The combat system is so robust it has its own instruction manual, but the gameplay is pretty straightforward even if you don’t read it (though it definitely helps, and there are some useful options you can toggle). It’s not really violent—this is a good-hearted story with the little match girl as its reluctant hero, after all. And anyway, there’s a lot more to this game than just fighting battles: the story is weighty and wide-ranging, there are strange items from various worlds that you can find and experiment with, and you get to team up with (Spoiler - click to show)a cool-ass mermaid for goodness’ sake. It's clear a lot of care went into every detail, right down to the pitch-perfect barks.

There’s so much going on in this game that it doesn’t feel like it could possibly work, but somehow it does, while carrying on the charming tradition of the first two LMG games—which, if you haven’t played those, I recommend starting there and then reserving a couple hours on a cold winter’s night for this one.

This game is not like anything I’ve encountered before. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished the final branch weeks ago, in a good way—and yet it’s easy to see why it’s so polarizing. The story is shocking, at times downright repulsive, in ways that I usually would not appreciate. The humor made me laugh, but it also made me wince. The writing is self-aware and full of asides (which I enjoyed, but not everyone does). It’s long, like novel-length long, and there are only a few choice points. Sometimes it almost felt like the game was challenging me to stop playing it so I wouldn’t get far enough to see the vulnerable parts below the surface. But I wanted to know where the heck this story was going. And then right around the time I got to that one scene deep into the first story branch—a horrifying moment that I never would have imagined in a lifetime of ideating—something shifted and I was along for the ride.

It felt like art.

Challenging parts aside, I really enjoyed the story and the way it was constructed. The premise—that the world had ended and a new humanity was born in the distant future, with a reverence for the ancient rapper Pitbull—doesn’t sound very serious, but it’s mined for both comedy and drama (and horror, romance, etc.). Underneath all the blood and guts, this game has heart, and plenty of important things to say. Even without many choices to make, I felt like an active participant, because the static parts periodically check in with the reader and leave room for reflection. Choice and self-determination seems like a major theme, and the fact that the story branches hinge on (Spoiler - click to show)relatively trivial decisions like what side dish you choose struck me as both funny and effective. The structure and ideas reminded me of other stories I’ve loved despite their roughness, like the Zero Escape series, House of Leaves, the work of Vonnegut or Saramago.

So, I’m in awe. I could never have written this game. I think the experience of playing it will make me a better, more vulnerable writer. For me, the difficult parts were rewarding in the end. And the end was really beautiful.

At its core, Starbreakers is a series of puzzles, but the puzzles are complemented by a slowly unfolding story which wrapped up the game nicely. It's mostly standard math/logic/word puzzles, but a few stood out as particularly creative, and together they formed a fun and satisfying path to the conclusion. Increasingly detailed hints are available in the sidebar, and I appreciated the wink to seasoned puzzlers somewhere in the middle (thank you for not making me do that thing I thought I was going to have to do). Worth an hour or so of your time if you like puzzles but not majorly challenging ones.

I really appreciated this game as a straightforward narrative, as a reflection on IF nostalgia, and as a multilayered mystery to unravel. The story is beautifully recursive, and the way the gameplay ties itself in knots is just fun. The descriptions and parser responses were entertaining and full of detail. Certain events felt slightly uncomfortable, but resolved in ways that made the conclusion even more satisfying—at least it felt like a conclusion, though it seems very possible I still have more to discover.

A nostalgic yet fresh adventure game set in an unusual world with unfamiliar problems that nonetheless felt very real. Light on puzzles, heavy on character. The story was both fun and emotionally resonant, and I appreciated the feeling of being able to choose how things turned out. Even the title is just really good. I enjoyed this game a lot, and I feel like I understand orcs better after playing it.

There's a beautiful simplicity to Inform code, and Antique Panzitoum uses both the phrasing and the features of the code to evoke a sense of place and inspire the imagination even though interactivity can only be imagined. The repetitive nature of the code makes the world seem even more epic, and I just thought it was really cool.

I also enjoyed playing the game itself before knowing what the code said, because the helplessness of not knowing was beautiful in its own way.

I was a beta tester for this game. The graphics are cute, the puzzles are fun and not frustratingly difficult, and the storytelling is funny and yet surprisingly emotionally resonant. And there's a robust tutorial for people new to IF, as well as Easter eggs for more experienced players. Also real eggs.