Ratings and Reviews by J. J. Guest

The Tunnel comes across as an intensely personal meditation on the subject of depression. It's intriguing, but the closed off demeanor of the protagonist means that the other characters in the narrative remain more or less ciphers, and though we are invited to fill in the blanks from our own imagination, we're not given much incentive to do so. As a player, there isn't a lot to do, and my feeling is that this story would have worked just as well as static fiction. The multimedia effects add interest but the text sometimes faded off slightly too quickly forcing me to refresh the page in order to finish reading.

So far as I can tell, this gory tale, centred around the programmers behind 'DOOM' isn't interactive at all. There's something that looks like a parser, but it doesn't seem to make any difference what you type. The story is amusing enough, more so if you're a fan of 'DOOM'.

Circumstances outside your control force you to move to a different part of a city again and again, as described in a panoply of randomly generated passages. It's not much fun, but as a satire on gentrification and urban displacement it's quite effective.

The most frightening of the Ectocomp 2014 games that I've played so far, Lime Ergot creates a genuinely unsettling atmosphere for all the beauty of its tropical setting. The game's main NPC, the General, doesn't do or say much but she nonetheless exerts a terrifying power.

A lot of good quality writing has gone into this fast and funny Ectocomp entry. It's highly amusing and well worth playing, even if your actions don't have much influence on the outcome of the story.

A creepy bit of body horror from the author of last year's equally disturbing Boogle. A parasite of some sort must complete a number of biological processes in the right order to hatch from its human host. I was pretty determined to beat this game but eventually my patience was spent, and I didn't choose another.

On receipt of the news that tonight is the night on which you will die, your reaction is one of stoical acceptance. All that remains is to choose the manner of your demise...

This is the funniest Ectocomp entry I've played this year. The player-character's final words made me laugh out loud more than once. It's just a shame it's unfinished. Post-comp release?

There are a lot of interesting ideas here; perhaps too many for a three-hour game, since most of them remain rather undeveloped. Some typos and a missing passage suggests the author ran clean out of time, but I'd be intrigued to see a post-comp release.

Being English I've never actually been trick-or-treating, it wasn't a thing here when I was a boy, so this simulator is the nearest I'll get to 'the most important part of Halloween' - counting the candy. It's fun for a few minutes, but could have done with a bit more variety - and maybe a few surprises.