Reviews by Cygnus

This game was pretty!! Really pretty. I should replay it, so I can see what the commenters were talking about, but first playthrough… very pretty. Use of colour is very smart, parsers all work, kinda sorta linear. Plot and worldbuilding is honestly top notch.

Again, hard to find fault with this one. Doesn’t need a map, because its various worlds are small enough, hints are either provided or not needed, so many dialogue options, feels…

I think this game had sound? Either way, it was super visually pleasing and mind-scratching in a good way. Kept me going, kept playing, and the atmosphere was awesome.

I’ll come back to this after I’ve replayed it to get the actual, like, feels that commenters were talking about. For now, it’s chilling at 4.5 stars (0.5 deducted for if I’d play it again; I’m only replaying it because the commenters were raving about it. Once I finish, I’ll probably up it to a 5.)

Shade. A good intro to IF. Parsers work (obviously). Very polished, short though. Somewhat surreal- definitely comes under its category. You kinda have a linear experience, but then again, everything’s kinda turning to shit as you progress.

Atmosphere was… conductive, I’d say, is the best way to describe it. For the length of this game, I’d say it’s quality was just enough that it filled the short experience with only content that a short game could have.

Somewhat horror? But overall, an incredible introduction to interactive fiction and parsers. Doesn’t need a map, or hints, because you basically just go around this like. Small house thing. No spoilers ;]

Hmmm… what else? It wasn’t really clear on wtf was going on, but I guess that comes under surrealism. Mechanics, again, straightforward and puzzles nonexistent… worldbuilding comes under plot and surrealism. For a game of its length and genre, I’d say it gets a 4/5. For an IF introduction, though, it gets a 3/5.

But it’s a staple of interactive fiction and an effective way of teaching it to people, so… what can ya do?

Also, the longer I play IF, the more I'm convinced everyone is Andrew Plotkin in a trenchcoat.

You play as an amnesiac navigating the mysterious halls of a Dreamhold, or a wizard’s haven. It has in-built hints, and even a voice which guides newer players of interactive fiction to the finer mechanics and mannerisms of interactive fiction.

It teaches people to- (looking at you, Dolphin)- pursue multiple leads rather than just one, and to catalogue what you’re doing. It’s immersive and mysterious, but culminates into one overall beautiful ending. You are left in the dark with some things, but that’s perfect in this setting.

There are ways to die, but you have ample warning and you can also easily go back and undo your mistakes. It also has a really cool mechanic that I’m not going to spoil as a way to use a certain set of items.

It’s a bit longer than certain other fictions, but overall it’s an amazing game to play to get a feel of things. I wouldn’t say this is a beginner beginner game, rather a secondary. For example! I would say play Bronze first, then Dreamhold. Of course, I started with Anchorhead, because apparently I’m a masochist, but it’s fine.

Rating this as a 4/5 because it doesn’t have extra content, and it's a little janky, but that’s fine.

(Bashes in the door) I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ON THIS ONE HOLY SHIT.

First off- ALLLL the points for worldbuilding. Like… holy mcfuckin shit. Holy shit. Wayfarers, Lacuna, rayfish, sculptures, ink, word day, berries, forests, trees, colours- Worldbuilding. Worldbuilding!!!!! I’ll say it so so so many times!!!! It’s so cool!

(Sigh). My writer's brain is so happy right now.

Anyway. Anyway. Anyway! Suuuuuper big world. So much to explore. And explore you do! So much lore. You’re not on a time crunch (which is refreshing), ie you can have dreams, you can sleep, it’s kind of like a simulation but so definitely, definitely not.

Ough. I couldn’t put this one down. I skipped several classes (not physically, just didn’t do shit) to play this. And I normally do that for IF games, but this one was especially gravitational.

Mechanics… from the way you interact with the story (typing the words which are ever so kindly colour-coded into locations, topics, and observable things) to the actual actions you do (swimming in lagoons, fixing stations, dancing [kind of], exploring volcanoes), this was a truly revolutionary turning point in interactive fiction. One of the longest (free) interactive fiction games out there, Blue Lacuna spans at over… 400k.

I did get softlocked for a bit (fortunately, they did have an option to kinda hack it; the god command). But once we got back, we kept going.

Plot! From the opening scene, I was faced with moral dilemmas at every. Fckin. Turn. I cried, like, 7 minutes into the game. It really says a lot about me, huh, that I choose emotions and people over anything else. The feels I felt. Jeez.

I haven’t done all the endings yet, but I was very content with my own ending. I got my closure with several characters, and it was a beautiful start to an end to a start.

Peaceful, beautiful descriptions. No way of killing yourself (dangit) and an incredibly polite game. Like, I said “please”, and it said ‘I appreciate your politeness, but the game works better if…’, and when I said ‘die’, to see if I could kill myself [spoiler, I couldn’t], it said “I’m sorry if you’re feeling frustrated. If you want to, at any point you can SAVE and close the game, and RESTORE to come back at a later date’. It was so sweet. And it had a sing response. It was really nice.

I would totally play this game again. Especially with a soundtrack. Whimsical, fantastical, amazing plot. Puzzles were great as well- very trial and error, but in a fun way. And once you’d puzzled them out, they stayed open (and some even gave you hints!). The NPC (cackles) was. Very awesome as well. Great characterisation!! So cool backstory!! Very fun. I definitely needed a parental figure, yeah. He called me ‘duckling’ and I fucking crumbled into a sobbing heap.

And… Rume. I both love/hate the detail that, (Spoiler - click to show)uh… as you go on in the story, you can’t cry over them. It was… heartbreaking. It hurt. But I was so engrossed.

Anyway! Deducting a bit because of the lack of hint-system [in the game] together with softlocking, but it’s a chip off the overall gloriousness of Blue Lacuna.

I would definitely recommend this. Maybe not for your first ever IF game, but still worth playing for everyone.

Oooh boy. This one was.. A doozy. At the start, I was incredibly pumped for this. You’ll notice that I said “at the start”, and that’s because it took a lot of mechanical reasoning to navigate, although once you got the idea, you could kinda get around.

Very beautiful in the end- multiple multiple endings. There’s a way to get softlocked a bit, but other than that, there’s a unique note system that helps you remember things. I loved the notes. Very much. A lot of colour-specific things. Very ethereal. Intentions are so cool.

We play as a ghost… puzzle master… thing. A notion, perhaps? Overall, a lovely game focused on puzzles with emotional mechanics and (an) interesting ending(s).

Also, there’s a walkthrough. That’s awesome.

I’d rate this as a 3.5/5. Mostly because of the repetitive nature of the navigation puzzles- timed/move based puzzles or mechanics are great for solving the puzzles, but after the solvation (it’s a word), imo it’s a better idea to just let us navigate easier and keep the locks on.

Would I play it again? Yep. Would I play it for endings? Yep. Actually, we’ll up it to a 4, simply because the mechanics were awesome in the endgame.

Another great one by Amanda Walker! Similar to Colourtura, it has really cool mechanics. Instead of interacting with objects, you get to emotion them. As with most Walker games, there’s a great hint system. Beautiful and lovely, heartbreaking and impactful.

This one was really hard to find a fault with. Like, at all. Amanda makes beautiful games, and this one has incredible mechanics, corresponding to emotions, which resonates with me a lot. Wracking my brain for anything I can fault here- oh. Not much extra content, I suppose.

But that’s just unfair to the entire game- it was a linear (ish) experience, a puzzle deduction game, and overall, amazing mechanics. I would definitely play again. I did cry.

You play as an unidentified person journeying with a man called Charles, in a nightmarish world of strange eclectic gods. A very linear game, with intended routes and such in order. I like that there’s hints, great system.

It's very Lovecraftian- got the normal things, cults, screaming eldritch demons, alchemy, so definitely fits there.

Overall, very short, but it’s fantastic. You can die, but it’s polite. Great introduction and commands. Could do with a little more context and variety, parsers are good. Another thing it could use is more worldbuilding. The atmosphere wasn’t tense at all (apart from That One Part), but still made sense.

Because of the length, I’ll be rating it a 3.5, because it’s… Y’know. It could’ve been expanded on, and for a hook, it’s not great. Writing ran a little weak at times, but still, pretty good!

Bronze is an interactive fiction following a similar story of beauty and the beast, but wildly different. With mechanics and fantastical backstory, this game is world-built in the best ways. It’s got an expansive yet still navigable structure, with in-built hints (that is quite literally the best thing an IF can have).

It’s almost romance, but also it’s fantasy and a story of revenge. There is no way to die, and there’s so much optional character backstory you can see. It’s a story full of magic. It is focused on one goal, with all the optional content limited to the main storyline, so there’s no real side-quests, only little bits of information you can look up which aren’t necessary.

It has multiple endings as well, and they’re all easily accessible. I’d definitely recommend this one for beginners.

(4.5/5)

Coloratura is honestly one of my favourite games to ever be made. It’s got an amazing mechanic- colouring people’s auras, with different meanings. It’s a beautiful message, and an amazing way of sensing things. You play as an alien traversing through a spaceship, trying to get back home.

It deals with topics of loneliness, participation, and emotional influences. It’s a unique way of seeing the world, and one that I can relate to in an esoteric and unexplainable way. This game is a combination of sci-fi, stealth and fantasy, as well as a tale of companionship and relations.

The only reason I rate this not a five out of five is because of the fact there’s no hint system, and trial and error can be the only thing you can do sometimes, with little to no warning at sudden ends which you didn’t realise would be happening.